Glass Skies
by Lore55
Summary: Witch's lived for the unusual. Riley was no exception. She had seen all manner of monster; demons, centaurs, dragons and speaking swords. One thing she had never encountered before, was a ninja. Now she was stuck in a world full of them.
1. Chapter 1

**Okay! I haven't given up on any more of my stories but this one has been struggling to write itself for a while.**

 **Wish me luck.**

* * *

No one was quite sure what had once stood at the top of the hill, nor what had happened to it or its occupants. There had certainly been some sort of building set before the long slope. The proof stood as a proving ground for the children of the small town.

Half set bricks, most crumbled away, left the structure rough and anything but safe. Inside its shadow remained the charred shadow of a fire pit, confirming that the remnants of the chimney had once been used for true fire.

Riley dropped her backpack by it and leaned her cane on a tree so she could slide to her knees and inspect the black scoring that had never gone away. Footprints, most of them children's, wrapped around the base of the chimney.

From her higher vantage point, and greater stature, Morgan poked her head around the corners, amber eyes shining in the bright sun.

"There's blood here," the elder of the pair reported, "Not much, just a few trails."

"Kids probably try to climb it," Riley predicted, touched the edge of the fire's grave. Heat sparked from it up her arm, lighting the tattoos that rested there a sickly shade of green. Her face scrunched up, nose crinkling and mouth carving into a line of disgust.

A few flicks and the color drained, leaving the ink black on her already dark skin.

Riley let her bag drop to her side and started sorting through, pushing books, plastic bags, and wooden boxes around she had what she needed. Somehow her water bottle always ended up at the bottom of everything.

The soft breath of jeans rubbing against each other alerted the girl to the last of their party, finally present. She didn't need to look back to see Viviane, pale as the moon, float across the ground to her side. The woman was the tallest of all of them, her hair shining white gold in the light of the sun.

The quiet, constant click that echoed from her finger tips was a reminder of Viv's endless collection of flip blades.

"So, what's the verdict?" she questioned, flipping the knife neatly between her slender finger tips. Somehow they had never gotten calloused, despite her years of working with her hands. Riley couldn't say the same, her own hands thick skinned and rough.

Her bare feet, toes painted pale blue, touched down on the outskirts of the area devoid foliage that surrounded the fire place. It was a perfect square, marking exactly where the house had once been. Or whatever it was. Some reports said it was a shebeen, or a bakery.

All rumors.

"It looks like there's nothing bad here," Morgan hazarded, tapping one of the bricks. Nothing shifted, nothing bit her. There wasn't even a creepy crawling rolling out of it to prick at her perfect skin.

Viv looked at Riley, who shrugged a little at her unasked question.

"Something bad happened here but whatever's lingering isn't hurting anything, really. Plants aren't growing and kids are getting scraped up but no one is dead," she waved her hand vaguely towards the monument. "I don't think we need to do anything."

That was a rare sentence for any of the three to say. Most of their time was spent walking in circles, dropping dried up plants, and twisting water in patterns that would make Pablo Helman green with envy.

Fire too, on occasion, but Morgan preferred to put less hazard into their work.

"That's… weird," Viv said after a time. Her graceful neck tilted with the arch of a swan.

She spoke truth as well. Riley could remember only a handful of times when they had left something alone. In fact the youngest could count on one hand.

"Well if there's nothing to be done here then we should probably get ho-" before she could finish Morgan's eyes were drawn to the ruin. The soot had started to creep out, reaching pitched fingers out to the girls with speed that should have been impossible by every law of physics. "-Oh. Fuck."

Riley reacted first, diving for the cane she had left abandoned. Its top shone brightly, chrysocolla exploding into shining light the second she touched it. She swung towards the darkness, whacking at a trendril that lashed out at her. She caught it on the cross and the soot retreated, slinking into a hunched snarl.

The dark girl scrambled to her feet, her bum leg screaming in protest when she put her weight on it to lift the weapon as a rapier, as Viv had taught her all those years ago.

She prepared to parry but missed the darkness slashing into her weak leg from the trees, catching her with a shriek.

Viv and Morgan lit the land with water and fire respectively, both glowing brilliantly in the dimming light of the world. Riley thrashed as she hit the ground, managing to catch a hand on her bag. She tried to rip it open to get her supplies but it was too late and her hands were too full.

Shadows engulfed her vision, swallowing the girl and dragging her down, down, down into darkness. She could see, couldn't hear, couldn't feel. There was nothing.

She fell.

* * *

The ground slapped her across the face.

Spinning around, rolling across the dirt Riley landed with her bag smacking hard enough onto her side to break the rib. She felt her cane clatter across the dirt to her right. The girl groaned, curling around herself. Everything hurt, everything felt more intensely than it had for the eternity she thought she spent inside of the pitch that attacked her.

Through her lids she saw lights spreading in bright colors. Reds and yellows danced across the skin, reflecting the world around until she got her courage up to try and see.

No darkness.

Just trees, fluttering green sweetly towards her face. The wind blew, carrying with it the feint scent of smoke, burnt copper, and broken greenery. The sky was streaked with pink and yellow, stretching long lingers across the pale blue of the atmosphere.

Very slowly, Riley sat up, drawing her good leg to her chest while the other stayed stretched out. She was covered in soot, coloring her already brown skin into shades of gothic black. A looked around revealed that she was sitting outside of the chimney again. Or rather, _a_ chimney.

This one was the exact opposite of what she had left behind. It was not crumbling, nor solitary on a hill. This one was nestled in a small dale and attached to a large building. Smoke poured out of the top of it, bypassing the bricks and riding to darken the dawn sky.

A closer look around brought on the understanding that the structure that the chimney was attached to was a smithy. Outside was a long display of one sided swords and diamond shaped knives. Stars shining with black metal showed across the wall, stipulating that this was a chimney from somewhere in Asia. Japan by the look of the weaponry and the armor that adorned a mockup of a scarecrow.

Riley rubbed her leg idly, dread rolling through her stomach. This was not where she was meant to be.

Not at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Last Assassins Shadow: Thank you! Here's more ^^**

* * *

There was always a need for witches, no matter the time or the place they could find work. As a nurse, a Brewer, a botanist. Riley had spent eight months as a marine biologist at one point.

This was no different, she told herself. All she needed to do was find civilization and get a job.

The very bewildered black smith had given her directions to a 'kakusareta-mura'. What that was, she still mulled over as she hobbled along the road. Her right leg was getting close to screaming she had been taking the trail so long, its muscle gap crippling her speed the way it had crippled her.

At least her stone was whole, the rolling blues and greens remaining cool beneath her palm as she trusted it, and the rest of the cane, to hold her up.

She wanted to get there before nightfall, her own stubbornness demanding that she continue until she either reached this 'Hidden Village' or her leg gave out on her completely, or the soot on her gills set in and suffocated her.

Wherever she had ended up, if nothing else, she understood the language. Her mother had been of Mu and taught her the tongue of the islands that survived above the continent. Peaks of mountains that had long since sunk and now housed a people whose origin they had lost to time and primordial gods.

Gods were not the reason she was wherever this was.

The creature in the fireplace. If the chimney belonged to a smith of weapons then it would make sense for it to be possessed by the creature. One of ash and war, formed by the sorrow of those struck down by the blades crafted over the fire.

That did not explain why its vengeance was not more prominent. Why children did not vanish, why men and women did not burn.

A possession with no voice and no evidence was beyond bizarre.

Riley was so focused on the mystery of the creature that had dragged her into this new space she almost missed the odd flickering of special disruption that rolled across her skin when she got close enough to the 'Hidden Village'

Hidden, she didn't not think was appropriate. Hidden wouldn't have a gargantuan wall wrapping around it, or its name spelled in bright letters across the entrance. Riley stared up the massive barrier, took a breath. It was nothing compared to the skyscrapers that blocked out the sun itself with their brilliance, but it was still an impressive work.

Riley hobble forwards, still coated in soot, towards a booth that had been situated at the entrance. Inside of it were two guards, boys the both of them, in near identical uniforms. The only real difference between them was their hair styles and the jagged scar that wrapped halfway across the face of one.

Riley hardly batted an eye. She was too tired to play with the notion that injuries frightened her.

"Is this Konoha?" she demanded shortly. She was out of breath, her eyes were wild, and her skin darker than it had ever been before, even with her best efforts to smear it off of her skin.

One of the guard stood straight up, looking at her. He was just as wide eyed as she was.

"What happened to you?" the more collected of the pair inquired, looking her up and down over the tip of a long needle sticking from his teeth. He was young. Her age, maybe younger, with fair skin and brown hair held in place by a bandanna.

"I was attacked," she said flatly.

"By what?" the scarred man quizzed, looking her up and down. She was scraped and bruised but largely unharmed.

Riley almost smashed her cane into the ground. "I have no idea. The Black Smith Gota told me that I might find safety here." She wanted in, she wanted sleep.

"Do you have a passport?" The scarred man at last sat back down. Riley swung her backpack around against her stomach, almost knocking her poor, overworked leg right out from under her. She hissed a curse and stumbled only a little before she regained what little balance she had left.

She did have a passport, of sorts, one that she dug out of the front pocket.

Or, tried.

Her hand found nothing in the pocket where the fold should have been. Her mouth carved a deep line. What the ever loving fuck?

Riley pulled open more pockets, one by one, steadily growing more frustrated than she already had been until steam was ready to start pouring out of her ears. With violence she ripped her backpack close and threw it back on. Her leg was steadily getting weaker, starting to shake. It wouldn't hold her for another half an hour.

With bared teeth she grit, "I do not." What kind of place was this that they needed to have a passport to get in? A separate country? A military base?

The two men looked at each other. One of them vanished, making Riley jerk back violently. Teleportation? No, the air was displaced enough for that. Speed then.

Riley swallow thickly. If it wasn't plastered against her skin the hair on her arms would have stood up.

"We can let you in," the remaining man, the one without the facial marring, declared, "If you agree to be searched."

Searched. She didn't have anything that would raise flags unless someone was of the magicks themselves. Despite the speed she was just demonstrated with she felt no Essence in them beyond that of a normal human. They were even less connected with this world than most Surface Dweller's of her own had been.

This world. It could not be the one that she came from, things were too different. There wasn't a car to be seen nor a cell phone in hand of any of the people that she had seen on her journey to the Hidden Village.

There wasn't a place in the world this large with so much little electronics.

"By all means," she invited, handing it over. All that was in there was a box of tea bags, some water bottles, a number of books and a change of clothes. Not a thing was suspicious about that.

The young man took it from her and brushed some of the soot off to start pulling it open before he paused.

"Do you want to sit down?" he offered, gesturing to the chair behind the table. Riley's eyes flashed and her mouth opened to snap that she did not when her knee dropped.

She caught herself on her cane, just barely. She had really over done it this time.

"That would be nice. Thank you," she was bitter and vengeful in face of pity towards her leg. This, however, was needed. When her leg decided it wasn't going on, it wasn't going on.

So she hopped over to the chair and collapsed, her leg still sending tears of pain through her muscles, all the way up into her stomach. She felt like she was going to throw up as the man pushed through her belongings. The Curse throbbed through her, pulsing alongside her veins to poison her cells, tear at her nerves. It was a fire that rarely dimmed.

"Do you have any weapons?" he asked, setting her bag next to her. There was no passport, no money besides a few ancient coins set on a leather cord. Worthless as currency.

Riley held up her cane tiredly for him to inspect. He nodded and picked up a clip board to start writing on it, scribbling in a script that she had difficulty reading.

"What's your name?" he asked finally.

"Riley." She was tired. She wanted to lay down and sleep. The patch of shade under the wall looked more than inviting.

"Riri?" he repeated, sounding somewhat dubiously.

"No, RYE-lee," she corrected slowly.

"Rei Lee," he handed her the papers and she came to realize her mistake. He thought she was saying two separate names.

She didn't care enough to change it this time. She wrote down Rei with the characters for water route, her own private joke.

澪

"And you are?" she prompted as the other man reappeared at his side, another batch of forms in his hands.

"Genma," he introduced, taking the papers to drop them in front of her. "Welcome to Konoha."


	3. Chapter 3

**So a lot of my stories go pretty slow, this one is going to have a quicker start.**

 **Reviews! Already?**

 **Not-Gonna-Update: Most certainly! Rei is going to have a lot of fun with that child.**

 **Snickering Fox: Thank you very much! I hope you like this one too.**

 **Skipping Through: Thanks! I'm having fun with this.**

* * *

Day 1 : Konoha Refugee Center

The Refugee Center was pitiful. And thankfully, near empty. The only people in it was a family of seven, congregated in the opposite corner, and an old man with glass eyes.

All nine of them were situated in a large common room, made primarily of cots on one side and card tables on the other. There was a minuscule area where someone had stuck a beaten couch and a pair of threadbare arm chairs in front of rabbit eared tv. The old man, Ryota Kaji, had taken up residence in the one that had a working recliner.

For her part Riley, or Rei Lee as she was now to be known, had set up camp on a bed pressed into the juncture of two walls. It was closest to the door and furthest from the food line but she felt better with the walls at her back. Across the sheets she had spread her meager belongings. Taking stock of her situation.

None of it was sellable. Not to the common masses, at least. She could make a few luck charms while she was waiting for this place's version of a work Visa, sell on the street and hopefully get some interview clothes if nothing else. She would have to be presentable if she was to get a job, seeing as what she had now was next to nothing of monetary worth.

Almost everything she had was heavy duty magic, stuff she had carried in ready for a fight, so the luck charms would be potent however tiny she made them. Enchanted bits of metal, magic infused stones, and spell books.

Her books were in a mix of the Ancient Greek of Atlantis or near-lost dialects of Gaelic, with a couple of smaller ones written in the tight runes of Old East Norse. It was truly amazing that she fit so much into one backpack. It might have had something to do with the spells she had embroidered into its borders.

They had earned her a few curious, suspicious looks from the gate guards before she spoke some of the lost dialect of her people. That was apparently enough to prove it was little more than a foreign language, and she was allowed to keep them.

"Lord," she murmured, "what fools these mortals be."

Noriaki Asano, mother of six, shot her a queer look. There didn't seem to be any other languages in this entire country, from what Riley had seen. Maybe the entire world.

Riley tried to smile at her but it came out strained. Her leg had been aching all day long, no matter how much she rested it. Stress, perhaps, or a change in the weather on the way.

Whatever it was she wished it would stop.

A walk probably wouldn't help, but she stuffed her things away and rose for one anyhow, if only so she didn't have to listen to the youngest Asano scream their tiny lungs out because they were too hot.

With her cane in hand Rily left the flat cot behind and set out into Konoha, the Village of Leaves, or something along those lines. She wasn't an expert at this language, just enough to communicate fluently and get what she needed.

Riley limped out of the Center, aware of the eyes on her as soon as she took three steps into the sun.

Was everyone in this _country_ the same race?

The way they acted you'd think they had never seen a black girl in their lives. Which, from her observations, might not be that far from the truth. The whole place seemed to be nothing but abnormally white asians. Not another black person in sight.

Glory.

Riley brushed a hand through her hair, pushing the paleness away from her eyes so she could see the village better. She needed a haircut on top of all of this other crap.

Konoha had a barber shop, somewhere. It had a lot of shops, actually. They were all situated in the very center of it, branching off of a main street with all sorts of stores. Every block or so there would be a cart selling foods. Grilled things, fruits, vegetables, fish, and snacks.

When she took the road away from that it lead to a congregation of clothing stores, some specialty, others advertizing for bulk outfits, all the exact same things. Formal robes and exercise clothes sat across the street from each other.

Riley had never seen a place quite like this, and she had been all across the world. A hundred countries, every continent and still this village was unique to itself. This world was unique, in ways she wasn't sure how to explain. Now that she wasn't dead tired it was more apparent than ever.

The very air was different from where she had come from. It thrummed with life that wrapped itself around her bones and sang in ways that only Lay Lines ever had before.

This world was thriving with magic untempered and untamed. Every breath she took filled her lungs with restless power that, had her leg not been ravaged by venom, would have sent her running, jumping, and dancing across the continent.

It was so unlike her earth, where the magic had been used up and the planet was being poisoned by those that depended upon it for their very survival. Here the grass reached for the clouds and the sun kissed the trees. There was no hole in the atmosphere to let the air escape or to let the bane of the stars pass in to destroy permafrost centuries old.

It was untapped potential in every corner of the earth. Even the people hummed with energy.

It was almost enough to make the sorceress feel high.

There had to be some adverse effects to all of this, she mused, such as insanity. Which was the only explanation for a boy to go jogging past her on his hand, in a green spandex jumpsuit.

She seemed to be the only one to find it odd, if the fact that the rest of the populace did little more than step out of his way was any this be a regular occurrence? Was it normal, even expected?

Riley certainly hoped not. Green wasn't her color at all.

On the girl hobbled, taking in the lay out of the town. She went from the clothing street, off into a wild growing park with a nice stream that ran through it. From there she found a school house, and a residential area before she had to limp away from a gated comunity.

Her leg had begun to complain enough that she really had to rely on her cane, and after her stomach offered its own protests she found herself making her way back to the Refugee Center. A nice enough town, for certain.

She wouldn't mind staying until she could get home again.

* * *

Day 9: Konohagakure Public Library

In the end, the only place that would hire her was the library.

She didn't mind, honest. She liked books more than she liked air, and the organizational system was sound and simple, and it was attached to the academy she had passed earlier in the week. All she had to do was check in and out, and put things back on the shelves. She could do that, easily.

Her problem was the blatant racism she had seen when trying to find a job in the first place. They never said it to her face, but as she was leaving she would always hear something about clouds and hiding in them. Whatever the hell they meant by that. She knew it wasn't her hair, she knew it wasn't her manners or her lack of references. There were teenagers hired before they even seriously considered her.

Even her bad leg was easy enough to work around, she had seen people working at the places she applied to with only one arm, or an eye and a half.

Which left skin.

It didn't even make any sense. In other places there was history to fall back on, populations that had been segregated and bitter white people who couldn't think without Donald Trump telling them how to.

Here, there wasn't even a division between races. As there was only one, there couldn't be.

Yet, there had to be something in this world that made them distrust her, something related to clouds. Another village maybe? This one was Leaves, the old man in the Center had been from Sand. Clouds wasn't too far off.

She would look into it once her shift was over.

And all these freaking kids were gone.

They were everywhere, dozens of them climbing around on shelves, pulling books out and being generally loud and rambunctious. Why there were so many of the little demons running around Riley had no idea.

She just knew she wished the little Gremlins weren't so fucking annoying.

The blond one was the worst.

A little scrap of a thing in orange pants with a style like yucca stuck on top of his head, he was a never ending chatterbox, constantly trying to get the attention of the other kids, an attempt that failing miserably.

Finally, after he had knocked a bunch of books an older girl was studying from to the floor, the witch had had enough. She pushed herself up from where she was double checking dates inside the checked book and caught herself on her cane.

The metal tip clicked against the hard wood floors of the old building , alerting the children to her approach. Most fell silent or drew away when they saw her coming, an automatic respect for librarians, a fear of cripples, or surprise at seeing her, it was hard to tell the cause.

Only the little boy, still laughing and pointing at his mess, was oblivious to her until her shadow cast across his small form.

She was no giant, in fact she was barely above 5 full feet, but she was certainly taller than a first grader. The boy craned his head back to her, his dark blue eyes meeting her paler shade. They were wide with his surprise.

Riley had carefully washed away her traces of anger. Children this young were rarely doing things with the intent of malice. She lowered herself to his level, using her cane to help her not to fall to one side if her leg decided to give out on her.

"You know, Libraries are made for reading and quiet. It's pretty rude of you to interupt hers," she said carefully. There was an odd silence and an undue amount of starltement in the little blond boy.

"So what?" he asked, dropping his eyes and kicking at the floor. It was an uncommon mix of cowed and defensive that only children ever really pulled off.

"So," she thought quickly, "Why don't you get a book to read too?"

His nose scrunched up. "Books are _boring_ ," he whined. He sounded like every other kid on the face of the planet. Any planet. Children were strange.

Riley hummed softly. "I bet I can find you one you'll like," she put forth, smiling a little in her challenge.

"What do I get if you can't?" he asked. Squinting at her. He had a vague resemblance to a fox, crafty and self serving.

"What do you want?" she ventured. He was a kid, it was probably just a candy bar or a toy or something.

"Ramen!" he shouted. Riley cringed from his volume.

"If you can keep your voice down, it's a deal," she even held her pinkie out for him. The poor boy just looked confused.

"You link yours with mine, and that makes it a promise."

The little boy looked at her hand before he copied her. Riley lifted and dropped their jointed hands thrice. A small tingle crawled across her skin. Promise's were important to her kind, binding and sacred. Even the ones made to obnoxious children.

Riley pushed herself up, grunting when her leg protested and started hobbling towards one of the shelves. She started skimming the titles, trying to find an interesting one for the kid.

No, no, no, no. None would be right for someone who showed such an utter lack of an attention span as the little blond child. He kept looking around and stumbling over his own feet, looking between her and the other residents of the library. Her cane and her leg, hidden in a pencil skirt.

She knew it was only a matter of a time before, "What happened to your leg?"

Riley's fingers paused on a book. The exact one she wanted, in fact.

"I lost a fight with a shark," she said truthfully. That was true, but it was not what cost her her leg. She handed the book to the child.

"Try that," she suggested. 'The Gutsy Ninja'. It was no best seller but it had been on the staff picks the week before and she had heard from a co-worker that it was a hit with her son.

The boy accepted the book, looking it over carefully. Riley rolled her eyes.

"It won't bite you. Now go sit down, and if you decide you don't like it come find me and I'll take you for Ramen after I'm done," she shooed him towards a chair. A few of the adult patrons were staring not just at her now, but at the little boy.

Riley didn't even want to know why.


	4. Chapter 4

**goddragonking: Thank you very much! I hope this one is just as good!**

 **wytheeth: She's definitely going to be more of behind the scene's person, but she will most certainly have quite the effect on the future. The actual details you'll see soon enough.**

 **angiewan601: Aren't they?**

 **Weasel Fu: You're welcome!**

 **amgs: I hope this is soon enough!**

* * *

Day 16: Konohagakure Public Library

"And then he was all like 'you need to trust me' and the bad guy was all 'never!' and then-"

"Kid," Riley cut in, not rudely, "Do you want another book yet, or are you still reading this?"

The little blond, a tiny boy of the name Fish (or something), had been giving her a play by play for the past half hour, regardless of her tasks at the front desk. It was, at least, a slow part of the day, so they weren't in the way of anything. She was still on the clock but she doubted she would get in trouble. Riley was glad that he was enjoying the book, if nothing else. There was a certain glow to his smile she hadn't seen before.

It was nice to see.

The child paused, rocked back on his feet, and then nodded. Like that he could have been mistaken for shy.

"D'you got any more?"

Riley corrected lightly, " _have_ , anymore. And yeah, lots of them. Give me a few minute's and we can go look again?" she offered.

The boy nodded, smiling at her again. He was so chipper, it was blinding.

* * *

Day 35: Konahagakure Training Ground 2

"Hey! Hey, lady!"

Riley came to a stop from her stream stalking to look over at the voice, now familiar to her. It was that same little blond thing, Naruto, that she had met in the library weeks ago. Normally when she saw him it was during her work hours, or right after, when he was pestering her to explain something that had happened in his books. The Gutsy Ninja had just been the start, she had him reading a half dozen more now.

The girl watched him come bounding over to her, cross the wide field to get to her waters. She had been looking for something in its depths, something familiar and useful to hang up in her new, cheap as hell apartment.

"What is it?" she asked, patient as could be.

The little boy was standing at the edge of the water, giving her a funny look that reminded her of a confused fox. Riley sunk lower into the water, until it was around her stomach instead of her knees. It was cool and welcoming, arms that reminded her of home. It just needed some salt and it would be her swaddling clothes again.

"It's a Gloine nan Druidh," she said simple, looking against into the crystal depths. There was one here, she knew it. She could feel it in her bones.

The boys face scrunched all the way up. "A glowing what now?" he repeated.

"Gloine nan Druidh," she repeated, then said, for his benefit, "a hag stone."

That apparently didn't clear anything up, as the next thing out of his mouth was, "What's that?"

Riley withheld a sigh. She could not fault a child for curiosity or a lack of knowledge. It was her responsibility to teach, not discouraged.

"A hag stone, an adder stone, or a serpent's egg. There are a million names for it. It's a rock with a hole through it, carved by water," she explained. Her voice was even and slow, keeping it simple to hopefully help.

"Why do you want it?" he asked, dropping to sit on the bank. The boy had a million questions about everything as far as Riley could see. It was good. Those who asked questions, found answers.

"They are said to be magic," she shrugged. "Some tales say they stop evil charms, in others they cure disease, or reveal illusions and lies."

"How does it do that?" he asked again. Riley wasn't sure if she should be annoyed yet, but she decided she liked him. He was cute.

"Magic," she said with a smile.

The boy nodded slowly, humming. Digesting her words, she hoped.

"How are you gonna find one rock in all of those?" was his next question.

To that, Riley smiled. "Another myth, is that they float in water," she said, then stood. Her arms, now bared, lit with intricate tattoos, mixing together with ancient intent and primordial magick. Her little guest sat straight up, his blue eyes alight. They were almost the same shade as her markings.

Slowly, the light sunk from her skin into the water, churning it and lighting it with a pale glow. Beneath her feet stones turned and shook, kicked up by the now rushing tide she had called to her aid.

With a breath let out of her lungs the water again grew smooth and calm, only this time it was murky rather than clear, and there was a telltale lump bobbing along the surface.

Riley reached out and caught the Gloine nan Druidh in her palm. She waded back to the shore to hold her hand out, showing off the little boy her prize. His eyes were wide and shocked.

"How'd you do that?" he nearly fell in the water he was leaning so far to see her. The tattoos had vanished under her dark complexion once more, leaving her appearing, for all intents and purposes, human.

"Magic," she said simply, and brought the stone to her eye to peer out of. What she saw was only a little of a surprise. There was spiral of power rolling across the child's stomach, and the lines on his cheeks were bright with the same thing.

She had sensed there was something off about the boy, but she hadn't known what it was. Still didn't, really. She had never seen spellwork like it before.

"I wanna see it!" he declared, trying to jump up to take the rock right out of her hands. Riley arched a brow cooly.

"If you ask nicely, I'll show it to you," she chided lightly.

The boy fell back on his heels, looking only a little put out before he declared, "Please?"

With a softer smile she handed it to him, letting the child hold it up to his eye. When he turned the gap to her his breath caught audibly. Riley smiled wider down at him and sunk down to the child's level.

"Pretty, aren't they?" she asked, holding up a hand to roll it over so he could the patterns, now invisible to the naked eye, dance across her skin.

"Magic," the boy breathed, nearly hopping closer to Riley. The girl laughed at his amazement. She never got tired of children and their wonder, however their constant noise may grate on her now and again.

He looked up at her, something new shining in his eyes.

Riley faltered. Oh boy.

* * *

Day 40: Konohagakure Public Library

"Teach me!" he demanded for perhaps the twentieth time in the past half hour.

Once again, Riley said, "Nope," and moved along the shelf. She was hobbling along with her cane in one hand and a cart of books in the other, putting everything away where they belonged. The boy, who she now knew to be one Uzumaki Naruto, kept tagging along.

"Teach me!" He said again. He had been tailing her since she had demonstrated her magic a few days ago, and showed no signs of letting up. Now it was going from cute to irksome. She had work to do.

Finally, after another four requests that were taking up too much of her attention Riley spun on him, ready to snap.

When he jerked back from the sudden movement she felt her stomach twist from anger to pity. That wasn't a regular child's reaction. The way his arms twitched towards his sides and his teeth bared were anything but.

Riley sighed softly, letting her irritation out like a tide. When she breathed back in she drew with it the patience of a glacier.

The young woman lowered herself to sit on her haunches, balancing an arm on her leg. She squinted at the child, who was now looking weary.

"If you can give me a good reason why, I'll give you a shot," she said at last. Naruto frowned up at her.

"A good reason? Like what?"

Riley shrugged.

"That depends on you," she said simply, and stood again to get back to work. She left a pensive little boy in her shadow, staring at her back.

She wondered what reason he would give her.


	5. Chapter 5

**JBebe: I'm having a lot of fun with this story, so I'm really glad that you like it too!  
**

 **wyteeth: Naruto is adorable! He's such a sweetie, a love writing him, especially while he's a kid. There's magic everywhere!**

 **goddragonking: Thank you so much! Gonna be honest, I can't tell if there are two d's in your name or not. So I'm just putting them there. Yeah.**

* * *

Day 41: Konohakure Yanagi Ogawa street  


He stopped her in the middle of the street. Riley could feel others around. Watching. Waiting. She leaned on her cane, a sort of smile crossing her face when he pointed dramatically at her, his chest puffed out and met her eyes squarely, a darker shade of blue to her pale set. Others stared, at him or her she wasn't sure. Perhaps both, Naruto for reasons she could not yet comprehend, or her for her apparent relation to the enemies in Kumogakure. A war had ended recently with them, and apparently they had the only black people in the world. Including the desert. How that worked, Riley hadn't the slightest idea.

"You should teach me, because I'm gonna be Hokage someday! The strongest in the village, the most respected ninja ever!" he was shouting. Riley looked him over, soaking in his words as he went on, detailing his dream.

Riley hobbled towards him, her leg acting up more today than it normally did. It made her limp worse than usual. She stopped in front of the boy, knelt down despite the discomfort, to be at his level.

"Not good enough kid. Magic is meant to delight, to inspire, and to aid. It is not made for power. Try again. Why do you want to be Hokage so bad," she directed him carefully.

The boy shifted uncomfortably. It was pretty clear that he had expected that to be enough. The child took another breath and bared his teeth.

"I'm going to win the respect of everyone in the village. No one will look down on me after that, they'll have to acknowledge me as a ninja," he wasn't screaming it to the heavens anymore. He was talking to her, and only her.

Riley held his eyes for a long minute before she pushed herself up at last.

"Alright," she said finally, watching his face light up like a firework, "I'll teach you. If-" she cut off his cheer.

" _If_ , you can pass my test."

His face fell. "A test?" he sounded crushed.

Riley smiled at him.

"It's not that hard," she promised, "All you have to do, is find a rock."

Naruto stared. "A rock?!"

Riley laughed at him, the sound light. He really was a cute kid sometimes. "Any rock, from anywhere, that has meaning to you," she elaborated kindly.

The atlantean smiled sweetly at the boy.

"You have three days, no more, no less," she added, and went on her way, leaving the child to run off and complete his new task.

This might just be fun.

* * *

A rock. A rock. Why did she want a rock? What kind of rock was he supposed to find?

A sparkly rock? A smooth rock? Another one of her… whatever they were. Hag stones. Only she already had one of those.

Naruto paused, about to kick a rock into the side of a building. What had Rei said?

 _Any rock, from anywhere, that had meaning to you._

Meaning to him. Well the rocks that had the most meaning to him were….

He lifted his head up, up, up, high until he could see the visage of the men that watched over the village. A grin started to spread across his face.

He knew where to find his rock.

* * *

Day 44: Konohagakure

Riley was sitting on the docks of the river, watching the water drag sticks and leaves along through tiny twirls and bumps. A Water Strider spun by, in an argument with a Dragon Fly. A Damselfly was crawling along her middle finger, speaking to her in a language she did not know. She heard it, with some focusing. The voices of Life that came in cricket chirps and dog barks but she never had been able to understand anything besides the calls the wales and the soft voices of the fish. They were her People, she was born to them and they to her. These creatures of land, however...

On the surface, it was very different.

She did understand the startled explosion of movement that preceded her potential apprentice's approach. The insects scattered and ran flew, or ran, and the small silver fish shot away from her feet where they had been curiously flicking through the world.

Riley scooted over so he could come skidding into the newly opened space by her side.

The poor boy almost toppled straight into the water before he managed to stop himself, with a little help from a grip on the back of his hood.

"Careful, kiddo," she warned, tugging him just so until he plopped next to her. He whined and shifted around until he was digging into his pocket, so fast she was surprised it didn't tear. Riley smiled a bit. She had never seen someone so excited to try and learn from her before.

She had taught before, at the Seminary of Sorcery in Tripura. It had been as a substitute to the youngest of children, but they were rarely as interested in her arts as this boy was proving to be. He was determined and excited. Elated.

Riley smiled at him kindly.

"Did you find one?" she asked, a clearly redundant question. The boy grinned and thrust his hand towards her, showing off a tight grip on a bumpy rock.

"I found a good one!" he said with absolute confidence. Riley slid her hand under his and he dropped it into her palm. The young woman brought it up to inspect it.

She had to blink a few times to make sure that she was seeing correctly.

Of all the rocks he could have picked, out of quartz or river stone, or clumps of dirt, he had picked cacoxenite in a chunk of amethyst.

"Why did you pick this one?" she asked, turning it over in her hand. Gold shards winked at her from in the rough depths. Like this it was hard to tell that it was anything special. Most rocks didn't catch the eye until they were polished or pointed out.

Naruto looked proud as a peacock.

"I was looking for a rock on top of the Fourths head, and I found these really good one that looked super shiny, and they were black, and there were these other ones that were shaped like kunai except they weren't and I was trying to figure out which one of those was cooler and I was looking at them both and then I-" he sucked in a rapid breath, "looked down and I saw that one and it was the _best_."

Riley laughed softly at his word vomit. "Why was it the best," she inquired.

The boy faltered in his massive smile. Looked unsure for a minute.

"It- it just is," he made a funny gesture at the rock.

Riley started smiling at him kindly. That was exactly what she had hoped to here. Magic didn't always have explanations that humans understood. It didn't always share its secrets right off. The fact that Naruto had chosen a rock like this right off the bat was a very good sign.

She set it in his hand and curled his fingers over his.

"Your lessons start tomorrow at 3 O'clock," she told him. Underneath his ear splitting cheer she also told him her address, a nondescript apartment in a quiet neighborhood. A place where people minded their own business and wouldn't notice, or care, about the boy going to visit her. Or so she hoped.

A squeak left Riley when she found a pair of thin arms thrown around her neck. She placed her hand on the boys back, surprised by his unexpected affection.

"Kid?" she asked, confusion drawing her brows together.

He pulled back just as fast and nearly blinded her with a grin.

"I'll be the best student ever!" he promised.

Somehow, Riley didn't doubt it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Reviews;**

 **JBebe: I'll go into other peoples views of her soon, for now I'm just spitting out chapters I meant to post ages ago. As for how old she is, she's twenty three right now.**

 **Wyteeth: I hope this clears at least a little bit up? We'll see what the future holds!**

 **Wicked Neko: Riley is my own character, but the other girls are both from arthurian legend (one of my person favorites). They are Morgana le Fey (the original, not the one that get's mixed up with Morguise) and Vivian, aka the Lady of the Lake. If you still want to know more I can pretty much write a book just on those two, so feel free to ask!**

 **As for her leg, no one knows yet. It's a mystery!**

* * *

Day 45: Konohakague, Ochiai Apartment Complex, B5

Riley picked up the tourmaline and turned it around in her hand, rubbing along the smooth side as she thought of how to phrase her first lesson. In front of her, on the table, she had spread a dozen, if not more, seemingly miscellaneous objects. In groups that didn't look to make sense. Naruto sat across from her, bouncing his leg impatiently.

At last, she began.

"Magic is everywhere. It is in everything, and everyone. Magic holds the world together, every rock and every tree," she started. "We, as sorcerer's, use our natural connection to the world to alter it. To call it to our aid, or to offer ours in turn, do you understand?"

Naruto nodded. Then stopped and shook his head. Riley tried to think of a new way to explain it.

"There's energy everywhere right?" she asked, waiting for him to nod. "That's pretty much what Magic is. Energy that spread everywhere. Like a spider's web across the world, it holds it together and-" she paused. Stood up and shed her jacket to the chair so her arms and shoulders were bare.

With a bit of concentration, light ignited across her skin.

"This is magic," she said to the awestruck boy. She lifted a finger and pointed to one of the rocks on the table. "That is magic too. Plants growing, water moving, children laughing. It's all magic. Do you understand?"

Naruto's face scrunched up. He was clearly thinking hard. Riley sat again and let the power melt back under her skin. At last her poor apprentice nodded .

"I think so. It's sorta like a bunch of ramen tangles together into a ball, right?"

Riley almost laughed.

"Yeah. Something like that," she confirmed. "It also takes different forms," she reached for the feather sitting on the table.

"Air is a complicated thing," she started. "Air is the element of Balance. It is made of two halves to form the whole. Aer and Aether. Aer is the lower half, closest to the earth and to People. Aer is dense and muggy, it is mist and lost things. Aether is lighter, brighter, rising above and lifting the clouds, it is Clarity and Understanding, and the closest to the Heavens.

Air is, at once, hot and wet. It fuels fire and pushes water, acting as a junction between these opposites," as she spoke she reached into the air and started drawing, leaving light in the way of her finger tips. She left the symbol for air at the top, and on either side added Water and Fire. "It's contrast is Earth, Stubborn and Unyielding.

With air you can charge a fire into lightning, or brush water into ice. Air is Freedom, and those naturally aligned with it are closest to Quintessence."

She lay a hand over the scattered objects commonly used to invoke air, or store it's Power. Fans, feathers, tourmaline, howlite, and a small arrow. They weren't all that could be used, of course.

"What's that?" Naruto asked, "Quintessence."

Riley was inexplicably pleased he didn't hesitate to asked her.

"Quintessence is Life. It is the fifth element. It is the light of the stars and the warmth of the sun. The smile in the moon, it is Time and Gravity together. Quintessence is the binding force of the universe twined together. "

Riley gave Naruto a few minutes to digest what she said before she moved on.

"Can you use it?" he quarried, eyes wide with wonder.

Riley shook her head regretfully. "I am still learning myself," she confessed. "I can't touch Quintessence just yet."

"You can use water," Naruto recalled, to which the young woman nodded.

"Water is my native element," she took that as her cue to start a new lecture. "Water is the element of Power. Limitless and Unending, water can change its shape to push through even the smallest cracks, or roar together to break the strongest dams. Water is Cold and Wet.

Those aligned with water must be able to find every gap, and have the patience to make their own. Even mountains bend to the might of a river. Water is everlasting and always changing. It cannot be destroyed, no matter the circumstances provided, even if means changing shapes.

Water users are highly adaptable, and endlessly tolerant. All of this combined makes water the most Dangerous element." Her fingertips touched the gathering made of shells, a vial of blood, blue lace agate, chrysocolla, a miniature vase and a small tritant.

She moved on to the next section of the circle when she deemed her student ready.

"Earth is the element of Resilience. Unwavering and steadfast, stone is as stubborn as it is variable. From unbreakable diamonds to soft alabaster those who take to the earth will crack and crumble before they step aside from their beliefs.

Steady and strong, earth is difficult to break with force. Weathering and change take millennia to complete. Likewise the Earth's companions do not change quickly, but with time and force from the outside.

Earth is Cold and Dry. Aligned with neither fire nor water, and resilient to the free spirit of air, earth is solitary and still.

Patient and filled with self reliance and discipline, earth is Eternal."

Naruto was staring hard at the light she kept dancing in the air, and the small piles on the table still. Now she showed him a grouping made of petrified wood, a small hammer, a fossil, stromatolite, and a string of copper.

There was only one more to go.

"Fire," she went on, "Is the element of Change. Constantly in motion its boundless energy and brilliance burns across the world without pause or regret. None the less, fire is more than mindless destruction. Fire is Hot and Dry.

Fire gives warmth to those in the cold, and light to those in the dark. Fire is hope and love. Even when it does cause harm, from its ashes and disaster comes about new life that had previously been choked.

Those who fall in line with fire are full of passion for life and love. They tend to be driven by unstoppable determination. Fire is the origin of all other elements, a gift from prometheus out of love and charity, it is the ultimate protector. It gave rise to humans and the world that we know now, and will forever pave a path to Quintessence"

At last she motioned to the pile of ashes, pumice, bellows, charred bones, sunstones, tigers eyes, and zincite.

"Which one do I get?" Naruto asked, inspecting each pile curiously.

Riley drew her hands back to her lap.

"Do you still have your rock?" she asked. Naruto looked up at her and nodded before fishing it out of his pocket to demonstrate.

"Yeah, why?"

Riley looked again at the stone he held.

"That rock is made out of Cacoxenite set into Amethyst," she explained, "It's hard to see while it's unpolished, I know, but if you rub that long enough and work it over a shine with start to appear. Cacoxenite is known as the Stone of Ascension. It enhances what is already there, and ties more firmly the connection to the Universe. It helps to heal the body and the mind. It also encourages peace.

Amethyst, the rest of the rock? Is a stone that protects from poison and encourages clear thoughts. Amethyst has a history of being a protective stone from evil thoughts and sadness as well, offering courage to those who allow themselves to rely on it."

"So what does that mean?" he asked again.

"It means," Riley said with a smile, "You are Free and Balanced. "

"Your element is Air."

* * *

Being out of the village for an extended period of time was nothing new. In all actuality it was very common for high ranking shinobi such as himself.

That didn't mean Kakashi enjoyed spending a whole two months in potentially hostile territory, barely sleeping, hardly eating, and constantly on edge while he tried to find a missing asset. All in vein, as those assets were dead by the time he finally managed to track them down.

The young ANBU finished his report, and was intent on dragging his sorry self back to his apartment for a well earned sleep when the voice of the third brought him back.

"Kakashi," the old man called.

The young man turned around, trying not to look _too_ dead on his feet.

"Sir?" he asked, his voice somehow unwavering.

"You have a new neighbor," he said simply. There was some glint in his eyes that set Kakashi on edge. Who in the world would have moved in next to him that the Hokage would need to take notice of?

"Thank you?" he offered, hoping he would be dismissed now.

As if reading his mind Hiruzen flapped his hand and said, "Go get some sleep, Kakashi. You're on standby for a while."

Standby. Normally he hated it. He had nothing to do, no missions, no jobs. All he had to do was train.

This time, though, he could use the break.

The shinobi gave him a sort of wave and practically fell out the door, intent on going home. He could figure out the neighbor situation later.

That was plan, until the door opened while he was walking passed to let a painfully familiar head of blond hair trot past him, ducking around his side while shouting goodbye to a girl who stood in the doorway.

Kakashi found himself staring.

She was small and compact, her hair was pale, almost as much as his, and her eyes were a blue the shade of Scilla mischtschenkoana. A sharp contrast was her dark face and arms, at the end of one was a cane made of shining wood.

The girl, who was no way older than him, caught him staring and cocked a blond brow upwards.

"Hello?" she put forth, weariness in the lines of her face.

Kakashi lifted his hand with a lazy, 'yo', and, greetings finished, he slipped away, to his apartment next door.

He was too tired to think properly anymore. He could analyze this shit once he'd slept.


	7. Chapter 7

**JBebe: It's very similar, but the use is different, which is what I'll go into later. There's a reason Naruto isn't turning into a rock trying to be a wizard, I promise. You think like a ninja!**

 **Wyteeth: I love Kakashi! He is the absolute best, I'm so excited to write him. It's going to be a lot of fun ^^ I thought about going the Avatar route, but since Atlantis is a greek city, and Riley is thereby of Greek descent, I decided to go with the classical greek elements and how they were described, as well as a few other things from magick that I found sitting around the internet.**

 **Wicked Neko: Naruto is adorable! There are a lot of things that get lost in translation. Seeing as she knows like, a dozen languages, I'd say she makes more than just a few mistakes. I'm glad you liked the magic, I spent a long time writing that all out. I'll definately stick in more with Morgan and Viviane, but I can't without giving too much of Riley's back story up just yet.**

 **goddragonking: Thank you so much! I hope you like this chapter too.**

* * *

Day 47: Konohagakure, Ochiai Apartment Complex, B5

"What's first? A giant storm? A Tornado? What am I gonna blow down?"

"Let's start with something simple," Riley redirected her students excitement with what was becoming practiced ease. She reached onto the counter behind her and picked up a small candle. It was, all in all, very plain. Yellow, the size and shape of a chicken's egg, it had been wrapped with a thin white ribbon.

Riley set it on the table and lit it with no more than a wave of her hand. Fire did not mix well with her native water, and she had a personal weakness against it, making the task more difficult than she would ever admit. It had taken her over a month just to be able to do that.

Even now she barely used fire. The thought of making larger flames made her hands shake and her shoulders grow taught. It was a fear she could not get rid of, no matter how hard she tried.

"Put out the candle," she said simply.

Naruto drew a deep breath and leaned back before she clapped her hand over his lips.

" _Without_ , your mouth," she scolded.

His cheeks puffed with a hidden pout. Riley pulled her hand back before he could lick it. God knew he'd done it before.

"How am I supposed to do that?" he demanded, crossing his arms and huffing up her.

Riley smiled a little.

"Before you can do anything, you have to understand _how_ to do it. How everything in the world connects to and affects each other. That's how magic works. "

"Oh come on! All this is is work," he whined, flopping against the table. "I'm not doing anything cool."

Riley hummed softly. Naruto had a small attention span. He had no patience for the basics that he needed to learn. The young woman leaned forwards and blew out. Air came from her lungs in a rush, catching more air on the way and spinning in around itself until their was a miniature tornado twirling around on the table.

"Whoa!" Naruto stood up so fast he almost knocked the chair over.

"You have to put down the basics before you can go on. Like building a house, you need a foundation before you put up anything else," she explained, letting the whirlwind dissipate.

"Let's go, let's go," he demanded, hopping up and down.

Riley laughed lightly. "Alright, alright. Do you have any ideas how to put the fire out?" she asked.

Naruto faltered, then frowned. He shook his head.

"No."

"That's fine. Tell me, why does blowing on a candle make it go out, but fanning a campfire makes it bigger?" she asked.

Her apprentice scrunched up his face. "How should I know?" he snapped.

Riley ignored his irritation. With a move of her hand there was a pen in her fingers that shone with light on one end. She carved a three way venn diagram into the air before she labelled each circle.

熱。燃料。空気。

Heat. Fuel. Air.

She tapped 'air' lightly.

"These three things are needed for a fire to burn. Fire needs fuel, that's the wick and the wax. It needs heat, which can be self sustained once the candle is lit. It needs air to keep itself going."

Naruto squinted at the light. Riley gave him a minute.

"It it needs air how come blowing it out works?" he asked.

Riley grinned right at him. "Good question," she praised. Questions meant he was listening, and thinking. They were a good sign, and she loved to answer them.

"It's simple, if you think about it. When the air blows hard enough on a flame with such a small base, it isn't hard to knock it right off," as she spoke she lit up the air between them with a demonstration. A smiling flame sat on it's wick, before it was picked up from the fuel by a gust of air. "What blowing on it does is it disconnects the 'heat' from the 'fuel'. Without 'fuel' the other two are left with nothing more to balance them out, and the reaction collapses."

"Balance is in a lot of magic," Naruto mumbled, staring at her diagram.

Riley nodded. "Balance is one of the most important things about magic. We must be sure to keep it in our hearts while we cast our spells. The Balance of our minds, our bodies, and our souls."

Naruto made a strange sound and crossed his arms. "This is a lot," he muttered.

"I know. There is a reason that magicians are often called wise. Our wisdom comes from our understanding. For all, all you need to worry about is putting the candle out," she waved her hand and the light show came to a close.

Naruto was staring hard at the candle. Wax started to fizzle down the side, sliding over the ribbon and onto her poor table. She should have put a plate beneath it.

"I have to get rid of the balance," he said slowly, blue eyes going narrow with his thoughts. "Without blowing it out."

Riley left him to think it out while she went to make dinner. The boy was tiny but he ate like a ravenous wolf. It was bizarre.

Riley had no idea where it went. She did know that he would eat just about anything that the young woman put in front of him. She moved through the kitchen, putting rice in a cooker. Her knife slicing neatly through the meat on the cutting board, moving with practiced grace and ease. She had picked more than magic up from Viviane, and before her her father had taught her much.

"What are we having?" Naruto asked from the table.

"Focus," she chided, "And it's Kokoretsi."

"Koka- what now?"

"You'll see when it's done." She doubted he would eat lamb intestines if he knew that was what she was putting in front of him. It wasn't easy to find either, lamb was not a popular dish in this world, though it did exist here and there. She had had to contact the farmer directly to make her purchase, and butcher the things on her own.

Most of the meat was still frozen in the deep freeze she kept in the laundry room. The rest she had already set into a slow cooking stew for dinner. This was just lunch.

Once she had the filling meats chopped well she wrapped them up in the entrails and set that over the gas fire on the stove, skewered on a metal rod.

While that grilled she started working on something else. Riley hated being idle, she worked her whole life and planned to keep doing so until the day that she died. Hopefully sometime away.

Naruto's voice came out again. "Can I just, get rid of the air?"

Riley turned around to grin massively at her little student. He blinked a few times at her, surprise all over his face.

"That's a beautiful idea, Naruto. Why don't you give it a try?" '

He nodded rapidly and turned back to candle before he faltered.

"Um. How do I do it?" he asked, squinting at flame.

Riley paused a moment. She had never taught someone straight from scratch before. The young woman closed her eyes and thought back, two decades, to when she was first learning. To when her father swam her to the edge of the reef to look into the abyss. The feeling of Eternity the wrapped around her throat, the ocean Herself sang into Riley's bones. Power nearly overwhelmed her.

After that, the magic of the seas had simply come to her.

"Look at the fire," she said carefully, "Watch the way the air pushes it?" she waited for him to nod, "That's the air. Watch it, let it show you how it works, and when you understand call it away."

That wasn't exactly how she needed to say it, but magic was a little different for everyone. There was a reason it wasn't called science.

"This is hard," Naruto whined after a few minutes.

Riley smiled in sympathy. "I know, but nothing worth doing is ever easy."

Naruto mumbled something but did as she asked. His leg started bouncing. His fingers began drumming on the table. Blue eyes narrowed at the candle before a whine exited his mouth. Riley sighed softly. He really had no attention span.

She was going to have to do something…

A smile lit her face when an idea struck her.

Riley turned the spits over the fire before she hobbled down the hall to her room. She had decorated it scantily, with no more than a bed, a desk, and a massive bookshelf. There were a few shelves on the walls that were cluttered with seemingly miscellaneous objects. Ribbons, rocks, candles, sticks. A couple of mangled bits of metal and glass.

She pulled the desk drawer open and pulled out a long line of string. She severed it with a pocket knife and brought the ends together. With a thought and a small pulse of power she called the fibers apart and back together until the line was perfect and unbroken, by either a gap or a knot.

She took that back to Naruto, and slipped into the chair next to him. He looked over at her, confusion written across his face when she held the string out.

"When you're having trouble concentrating, try playing cat's cradle while you're doing it," she instructed.

Naruto looked the loop over strangely. "What's that?"

Riley wound the line between her fingers. "You take it forward and back, loop it around, all sort of things. Experiment," she demonstrated before she handed the string over to the little boy. He fumbled through getting it started.

Children did not have fine motor functions. She had forgotten about that. Huh.

"Just keep trying. Cat's Cradle doesn't have to be right, or even close to it. It'll just keep your hands busy, so you don't get so distracted," she explained, gesturing vaguely.

Naruto nodded and looked back at the fire before he started pulling and twisting the strings. Riley knew it would get tangled, but that was fine. As long as he was learning. Riley hoped that the string helped, she didn't know a whole lot about how hyperactivity and wandering attention worked.

While Naruto kept working Riley went back to the kitchen, pulling their dinner off of the spit. The rice was finished as well, and she piled equal portions onto a pair of plates. A glance over her shoulder and she paused. The fire was flickering. Naruto glared at it, his fingers working through the twine. An idea occured to her.

She turned to the table once she had chopsticks and smiled warmly. A cheer rang out when the fire went out completely. Riley was impressed. It took most people hours, days, even weeks.

She set the plate in front of him and ruffled his hair.

"Good job," she praised. Naruto beamed up at her, a sun indoors.

What a cute kid.

* * *

Kakashi was still tired, but he'd been sleeping for twenty eight hours and he needed to do something. Anything. Even just take his dogs for a walk.

That was exactly what he was doing, in fact.

With eight dogs in tow he walked out of his apartment, almost directly into the small woman he'd seen a few days ago. The one that lived next door.

She was holding a plate in the hand that wasn't occupied with a cane. On it were was a pile of brown spheres. They smelled sweet and friend. The mask hid the wrinkle in Kakashi's nose. His two least favorite things.

"Er, hi?" the young woman looked up at him. He was a good deal taller than her. Pakkun sniffed at her heels, drawing pale eyes down to see him. "Hello to you too, sweety."

She wasn't looking as Kakashi when she pushed the plate into his hands and dropped to the ground to offer her hand to the pug. He sniffed it wearily before sitting down and looking right up at her.

"You smell like fish," he declared. The woman jerked back, surprise flitting over her features before she smiled.

"I'm from the ocean. Can I pet you?" she asked politely. Kakashi cocked his head and looked down at the sweets in his hands while the dark lady scratched his dogs behind his ears once given permission. The rest of his Pack soon followed suit, and she was surrounded by a sea of fur.

"That's for you," she threw up at Kakashi after introducing herself to all of his dogs. "The Loukoumades. I didn't introduce myself properly the other day. I'm Rei Lee."

Kakashi stared down at her. "Kakashi Hatake," he said simply. He ducked back in to throw the dish away, both because he hated fried sweets and because it might be poison, for all he knew, before he returned and started shooing his dogs. They were never this fond of strange people.

Rei Lee was weird.


	8. Chapter 8

**goddragonking: Thank you! I hope this is soon enough! I really like writing this so I'm glad you enjoy it ^^**

 **Wicked Neko: Kakashi was like. Dead on his feet in the last chapter. He didn't have the energy to question this strange girl next door. She's not really trying to keep it a secret, since its not a middle ages and she won't, you know, be burned at the stake. As for the jutsu, I think she would have a basic understanding via assimilation.**

 **Reuel: Thank you so much! I actually don't care for kids personally, so its super weird for me to be writing a character that likes them.**

* * *

Day 225: Konohagakure, Ochiai Apartment Complex, B5

"How come we don't use spells?"

Her student of half a year was ever inquisitive, and recently he had picked up a few of the books she had brought with her. There were more than those that had sat in her backpack. Within one of the boxes she had placed in there was a few hundred more that she had been steadily filling her apartment with until there was nary the space for anything more.

Riley turned away from the plants she was watering, foxgloves, snapdragon and coltsfoot, to look over at him. He was midway through the Prisoner of Azkaban. She was surprised that the question hadn't come up before, since he had been reading Harry Potter for the past few weeks.

The young woman set her watering can down and hobbled inside, moving over to one of her bookshelves and pulling off an old tomb.

Not that many of them were new, mind, only that this particular one had been written by the Trinity of Macbeth. Fury, Grace, and Fate had recorded their spells and set the book into the walls of the castle of the king they themselves had placed on a throne. It had remained hidden for so long that it wasn't until they were razing the land for Inverness Castle that anyone even knew it existed. It was found by a serf during the deconstruction.

She set it down on the table in front of him.

"The magic that we use is Ambient. We don't deal with absolutes, or set scores. There are no words our magic needs. No set gestures or thought processes. Ours is a magic of creativity and expression. The world itself is our greatest supporter, and so long as we trust in our magic we are never alone.

The magic within those books, and what others typically think of, is Erudite. It is very exact, and must be executed properly or it _will_ backfire. It's not like ours, where we can draw energy from around us and be filled from the outside. The power needed for those spells comes from within the magicians themselves, a bit like the chakra ninja use," or so was her understanding. "If you really want to learn that, I can teach you, but it is very different from what we have been doing for the past few months." And, in all truth, she didn't like the restrictions of it. Even what she did use was still tainted by the filter of her own natural affinities.

Naruto looked down at his book, then at the thick, complicated letting on the front page of the grimoire. Finally he shook his head. "Maybe some other time," he said at last. "I gotta learn all the ninja stuff too, so I can be Hokage!" he declared the last part louder than strictly necessary.

"Alright," she reached over to ruffle his hair lightly.

"Hey, hey, Rei," he turned bright blue eyes up at her, leaning into her hand. He was affectionate. Like a puppy.

"Mmmm?"

"Can we go out for ramen tonight?" he asked, giving her his best pleading pout. By this point he practically lived with her. The only times he was even at his place was when he had to sleep. Even then more often than not he just took up residency on her couch.

Riley smiled a bit at him. "What, you don't like my cooking?" she teased, flicking his ear harmlessly.

Naruto ducked his head, whining. "I didn't say that!"

Riley laughed at him.

"Alright, we can go out," she promised. "If you finish your homework first."

His face scrunched up. He flopped against the chair. She didn't know why he hated homework so much, he had clearly shown a love of learning. So why did he hate school so much?

"Come on, I know you can do it," she encouraged.

He shook his head. "No, I can't. No matter how hard I try I'm always wrong! Even when I think I'm right, even when it's what the books say I always end up being wrong!"

Riley frowned at him. If he was that frustrated there was no way he wasn't trying. The young woman pulled away and started walking. Unless she was mistaken, her neighbor with the cute dogs was home.

She limped over, and knocked on the door. Then knocked again. A third time and she was about to give up when the door swung open to reveal the little pug with the vest.

"Hello Pakkun," she greeted, "Is Kakashi around? I didn't hear him leave earlier." Given that he was a ninja there wasn't much a chance for her to hear him in the first place. Regardless, she had to ask.

"Eh, no?" Pakkun scratched behind his ear. "Why?"

Riley flapped her hand at the door, where Naruto was poking his head out to see what was going on. When he saw her looking at him he smiled sheepishly.

"My kid is trying to be a ninja but its not working." Riley was truly underwhelmed with how eloquent that sounded. She was getting more fluent, but only so much.

Pakkun turned to look at the kid. Something interesting passed his eyes.

"He's _saying_ he's not here," Pakkun corrected himself. From inside was a rude mutter of 'traitor'.

Riley smiled ever so slightly.

"When he _says_ he's come back, tell him I'll take him out to dinner if he helps," she requested.

The dog turned his ear up to her. "Are you asking him on a date?"

Riley snorted.

"I don't want to scare the big bad ninja away with that kind of talk," she chided lightly, "More like a payment for private tutoring."

"I'll tell him," Pakkun assured, to with Riley thanked him nicely. She waved her hand at Naruto.

"Come on Youngling. Let's take a walk," she encouraged. Naruto scrambled to get his shoes and came back at a bounding pace, rushing for the stair case. Riley went after him as a jaunting pace. As much of one as someone who had to use a cane could, at least. He was sitting on the banister waiting for her when Riley hopped up on with her good leg and slid down the spiralled stairs to the ground.

It was one of the reasons she had chosen this place as opposed to some of the others that were in her price range. It made getting down so much easier.

Naruto stuck to her good leg like a bur, recounting the tales of the boy who lived and his classes to the young woman, who listened with most of her attention. The rest was on navigating the area around them until they were making their way through a park.

Nature sang around them in the voice of cicadas and leaves falling from trees. Clouds called warning from far off.

Riley liked this place.


	9. Chapter 9

**Okay so this one is more like 3 little chapters squished up into one. I've been sick as a dog lately so its really a miracle I managed to finish it at all.  
**

 **Reviews;**

 **Helexical: Riley is a fish teaching a fox magic.**

 **wyteeth: Ship away! Riley is actually a little older than Kakashi, she's twenty four (I skipped her birthday this year around ^^') to his twenty three. And it will be interesting to see how she gets alone with Lee, won't it?**

 **JBebe: Thank you! I'm trying to make sure that everything is clear without boring everyone with teeny tiny details that have no relevance to the plot.**

 **Last Assassin's Shadow: Thank you!**

 **readerrrr: Thank you so much! I'm really glad to know that you like it so much!**

 **Guest from Sep. 18th: Oh good! I am too.**

 **alia00: Thanks!**

 **Guest from Oct. 29th: Thanks! So am I!**

* * *

Day 295: Konohagakure, Training Grounds 8

"Come on, stop squirming," she chided harmlessly. Naruto huffed at her and frowned from where she had him standing on a log. The field they were standing in was open and wide, in the middle of the forests that were integrated into the village. There was someone watching, though she wasn't sure who. Kakashi perhaps, or Naruto's little ninja teacher.

For all she knew it was one of those shady characters in the animal masks.

Whoever it was, she didn't particularly care, as long as they weren't going to interrupt this.

"I'm bored," he whined. Riley shook her head at him.

"Patience, Little One. I'm almost done," she promised. All around them, etched into the dirt, was several dozen tiny symbols. Runes of her long forgotten home. Autumn had come, and most of the runes were obscured already by the leaves that had fallen. That was fine. It was probably for the best.

"You said almost forever ago," he complained.

Riley shook her head. "Then surely I must be closer now," she replied with every intent to be infuriating. From the pout on his face it worked. Riley smiled and walked back to him, handing over a thin object. From the end dangled a feather.

Naruto accepted it, and opened it with a snap to reveal the eye painted on the inside. His brows drew together, his head tilted. Riley waited. He knew this symbol, she had taught it to him months ago.

"It looks kinda like a Nazar?" he turned it over. Shut it, and opened it again. "Right?"

"Very good," she praised, watching her student's face light up. "Now, you are a child of air, so a fan is only natural to use to enhance your movements-"

"What do you use?" he cut in, leaning closer to her, almost falling off of the tree stump.

Riley smiled dryly and held up her cane. "What do you think, little one?" she teased.

Naruto flushed. "Oh."

"Where was I? To enhance your movements and act as a conduit for your abilities-"

"Like ketchup?"

Riley stared for a few minutes before she realized her mistake. "Conduit, it's like when you pour water through a funnel so it doesn't get everywhere. You're thinking of a condiment. But that's a good example too. If you use it right it can enhance and change things as well."

"So I'm... funneling ketchup."

"You're using the fan to enhance what you can do," she corrected. "Wave it," she instructed.

Naruto was beyond the point of questioning whatever strange instruction she gave him. They always came out right in the end. Whether they did what they set out to was another story entirely.

Naruto gave the fan a wave, sending a few leaves in the wind to spinning around. He looked at her for more instruction.

"Now you make the leaves move, on your own, like I taught you."

He obeyed, kicking up a bigger twirl of wind and debris. He was ahead of her thoughts, it seemed, for he did the same thing with the fan as an aid. The result was a gust thrice as strong as the one without the fan.

Naruto's face lit up.

He started waving the fan around, making the leaves dance and twirl. Dust was kicked up, rocks started to tumble. Riley laughed at his enthusiasm, leaning sideways on her cane. It was good to see someone who loved magic so much. She hadn't seen someone like that in many years.

It was a little less magical when he made a gust so big he was knocked off of the log.

Riley walked over, leaning above her young student.

"Now try again. _Without_ falling," she teased lightly.

Naruto stuck his tongue out at her.

* * *

Day 352: Konohagakure, Hokage's Office

It wasn't often that Riley was called to the office of the most powerful man in the village. In fact, the only other time she had done it she had been signing residency papers in front of a dozen witnesses, saying she meant no harm for anyone.

Now she stood with the Hokage, who was ancient and unhappy, and another, also ancient looking individual, though this one had long hair and wore primarily red. There was a massive scroll strapped to his back. He wasn't her biggest concern though. No, her biggest worry was the little blond boy standing in the middle of the room.

One of his hands had changed since last they met, now appearing as an oak appendage.

"You took too much, little one," she was smiling at him when she said so. There was nothing that had happened that couldn't be undone.

Naruto looked up at her, a petulant frown on his face. He cradled his hand, the one now wood, against his chest. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Yes," the old man asked, stepping to her shoulder, "What do you mean?" There was severity in his eyes she hadn't witnessed before. The other elder gentlemen, whose name she didn't catch, was watching her just as carefully.

Riley really would have rather not done this with an audience. Especially those who knew next to nothing of the magicks.

"We are guides, leaders, teachers. Not kings or queens, not generals or commanders. We set a task and ask the world help us with world decides how much of its energy we need to get the job done, and we must trust it to provide what we need. For those who do not trust in the universe around them to support will find themselves falling on their face."

"I didn't fall on my face! My arm turned into a tree!" He waved it at her as though to prove his point.

"I can see that," she said patiently. "That happened because you didn't trust, and you got greedy. You took too much energy. Too much, or too little-"

"And the balance disappears," Naruto recited. "So how do I fix it?" he inquired.

Riley smiled at him. "You apologize, and offer recompense."

"Re-com-pense," he sounded the word out. Frowned. Riley waited patiently. "Re-com-pence. Compensate. Re compensate? I have to give it back?" he guessed.

Riley grinned brightly at him. "Exactly. Give it a try," she motioned at him and the boy took a breath. She saw him reached into his pocket with his flesh hand and pull out his amethyst cacoxenite. He rubbed his thumb over it and, to her surprise, the bits of gold flashed

Slowly, slowly, the wood started creeping. It lightened from oak to ash before all of of his skin started flickering with that same gold coloring. He took another deep breath and the gold shattered off of him like glitter exploding off of him into a whirlwind that scattered it into nothing. It was over in seconds, and along with the light so too went the wood, leaving Naruto inspecting the now flesh hand.

"How did you do that?" the man with the longer hair demanded, grabbing for Naruto's hand. Riley swiftly smacked his arm away and put herself between him and her student. She may have been just a little defensive of him. Just a little.

"I just told you," she said, growing snippy. "He apologized, and gave back what he took, plus some."

"That's not how natural chakra works!" the man argued, frowning down at her.

Riley stood straighter, lifting her chin defiantly.

"Honestly? I don't know how chakra itself works. What I know is the Essence of the world, and how it works. It is sentient, conscious in the same way that a sea is breathing. It is will tell you its secrets if you listen, and if you believe otherwise, you may not be listening hard enough," she declared with utmost confidence.

"I've been training with it for years-"

"Then you've done very poorly," she cut in, "if you didn't notice that nature has a personality."

She almost pitied how flabbergasted he looked.

Almost.

* * *

Day 365: Konohagakure, Ochiai Apartment Complex B5

It was hard to believe that she had been there for a whole year.

Impossible, in fact. She had spent an entire year inside the walls of a city that was not her own, with a people she knew nothing of, teaching a boy magicks unknown to the world at large.

It was surreal, even for someone like her.

So much had changed. Her friends gone, her teachers out of reach, and everything she had come to known vanished.

It was not a total loss, she mused. She had gained things too. She had gained a neighbor, and a student. And something of a teacher of her own.

"So it's a three way balance, between mind, body, and spirit," Naruto clarified. He was sitting across from Kakashi, who, after much pestering, bribery, and threats of petty pranks, had agreed to tutor the boy when he was in town.

Not often, to be fair, as he was constantly at work for the city, but it was alright. Any help would be nice, since Riley couldn't offer any of her own in regards to ninja and their ways. She knew magick, she knew mystery. She knew swords and tritons and she knew the sea.

She did not know chakra, or katas, or anything of the like.

So his help had to come from someone else.

"That's what I said," Kakashi confirmed. He was still reading some raunchy book, from the pervert that was sitting outside of her window, for one reason or another. Riley didn't feel like thinking of it. There was take out on the table, a pug in her lap, and her student learning what he needed to.

It was… nice.

And in her own ways, she was content.

She hadn't been able to go back to smith to investigate. She had been preoccupied with trying to set up a life for herself here, and then there was work, and teaching, and an apartment to maintain. She simply hadn't had the time to go searching for a way back home. She was a smart woman, at least in some ways, and so she needed options. Something secure to come back to if she fucked up her attempts to leave.

And besides that, she now had a responsibility to her student.

Yes, Riley decided, she was going to be here for some times yet.


	10. Chapter 10

**Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin, into the future**

 **Reviews;**

 **goddragonking: Thank you! Here's another update ^^**

 **wyteeth: Thanks! Pakkun is adorable, I love him.**

 **JBebe: Poor ninja. They don't know what they're getting into.**

 **TetraOfTheInternet: Thank you very much! I'm trying really hard to stay consistent, so I'm glad everything makes sense.  
**

* * *

After the first year, things went quickly.

Her student grew stronger, her friends became better. Jiraiya wouldn't leave her alone when he was in town, Genma and Raidou started hanging around her and Kakashi was marginally less standoffish.

By which she meant she would some home sometimes and he would be in her kitchen, brewing tea while his dogs milled around her furniture, and would even say hello on lucky days.

It was… odd.

Coming from someone who had grown up with nurse sharks and lived in a pocket dimension for three years with two immortal sorceress's that was saying something.

She finally got back to the Chimney, only to find that whatever had dragged her into this strange world was long, long gone. There wasn't a single trace for her to follow. Not a single way for her to get back home.

So she made her peace and moved on.

She found a goal, to sell charms and knowledge to those who needed it.

But to do that, she was going to have to hoard her money. Which meant living off of rice, tofu, and ramen for over twenty months.

It was… unfortunate, but necessary. And in the end, worth it.

Day 1,068: Konohagakure,

"Remember, remember, the fifth of November, of gunpowder treason and plot. I see no reason why gunfire treason should ever be forgot."

Many things happened on November fifth. Christopher Columbus learned about Maize. Copernicus saw a lunar eclipse. Spain and England signed a peace treaty. The Kingdom of Poland was formed.

Her quest for vengeance began.

It was odd, really. That the worst things that had ever happened to her also occurred the same day as one of the best things happened. It was the day she met Viviane and Morgan.

It was the day she opened her book store.

Well. Bookstore was only one of what it was. It was a bookstore, a cafe, and an apothecary all rolled into one. In remembrance her origins and of a place that once helped her immensely, she named it 'Reefside' and decorated it with aquariums and soft lights.

She sold pastries and sandwiches, novels and guide books. Teas and remedies and charms.

Over the years she had gained something of a reputation. She was a witch, as all knew, and when she sold something it _worked_. If you were sick she would give you bark to a chew on, and viola, you were cured. Have a spat with your brother and she would solve it, have a misbehaving weed infestation and it would be gone. She seemed to have something for everything.

Even wards against malevolent spirits.

She had heard, in passing whispers, that that was why she kept Naruto with her. To keep a leash on a demon.

Why they thought he was a demon, she doubted she would ever know. She knew he was… odd. His Essence was not entirely his own and there was some sinister Something in it. Or, perhaps it was not sinister, merely angry. She knew many creatures to that effect. Herself included.

She had been so angry, when her father died. So full of screaming and crying and anguish.

All she wanted was her justice. All she wanted was to quell the shrieking in her heart. All she wanted was-

"Is this high enough?"

Her head snapped up from where it had been bowed over a Whitespotted Bamboo shark, who was very pleased with her choice in sand. It was soft and it fluttered just right when a tail flipped through.

Genma was holding a shelf up, a little above his brow line. Riley smiled and nodded.

"Perfect. Thank you for helping out, I appreciate it."

Riley may have been as stubborn as the seas, but she wasn't stupid. She knew that she could only lift so much, could only do so many things on her own. She had no problem outsourcing her labor to friends or neighbors. Genma happened to live across the street from her new shop, a detail that raised her suspicions somewhat, and had volunteered to assist her in her endeavors.

Naruto stumbled by, the seven year old carrying a box of books that was, by all rights, too heavy for someone of his size. But he was just as stubborn as his teacher, and wouldn't let anyone help him, no matter who it was.

The young woman hid a smile. He had come a long way from the little scrap of a boy who had trouble reading more than two syllable words.

She was proud of who he was, and who she had helped him become. Thanks to Kakashi, and his new Academy teacher, he was even doing better in his classes.

He didn't have many friends that she knew of. He was busy with their lessons, and his ninja studies, but there were still some days where he would run off with a gaggle of other boys his age. Kiba, Shikamaru, and Choji, she was pretty sure were their names. She had never been formally introduced.

She was sure they were nice. Naruto was a good judge of character.

"Make sure you put those in numeric order," she called after the blond boy when he dropped the box on the floor and started pulling books out.

"I know," he stuck his tongue out at her, harmlessly, and started sliding the books into place. She had everything organized by difficulty, subject matter, and sub-categorized by author. At the front desk she kept a file cabinet with cards showing every book, every scroll, and every movie she had in her collection.

It was, all things considered, kind of small. But it would grow. In time, as all things did.

Time.

It was about time, now.

"Naruto," she interrupted his work and the little boy turned to him, curiosity on his features. "We're going to out tonight, be ready by dusk, alright?"

While he still looked confused he did smile at her, and agree easily. He was a good kid.

She was lucky to have him as her student.

And even luckier to have ninja as friends. It was funny, no civilians seemed interested in conversing with her, let alone befriending her. She assumed it was something to do with her being a witch, but really, who knew.

It hardly mattered.

She had what she needed.

* * *

The moon was up. The light spilled through the trees, into the clearing in the many woods that surrounded and thrived within the village of the leaves.

Riley stood the edge of the pond, sized perfectly so the moon filled it and cast off of the rising steam in shattered fragments of a rainbow. Starlight shown up in the air, twinkling down at the mortals in their sight.

Naruto sat across from her, on top of a small rock. His legs were crossed and his arms were bare, his jacket laying in the grass beside the stone.

"You have done very well, little one," Riley praised. Wind picked up, curling around them. It didn't disturb the pond.

Naruto smiled up at her. "You think so?" He was so bright. Like the sun in the middle of a rainstorm.

In some ways, he had saved the Atlantan. Rescued her from too much time, from being alone, from being good only for shelving books and selling luck.

"I do. That's why we're here. It is the sacred rites of my people that I am to pass to you," she declared. It wasn't quite right, but her Japanese was still being perfected. Almost.

"Rites?" He parroted, cocking his head.

Riley hummed. "Not the right word. You have already passed the rites, is what I mean. Your advancement in air, the level of mastery you have, has earned you recognition," she focused, lighting up her own tattoos. "For each great step you take, for wash advancement you earn metal for all to see. A warning for all to know. "

Naruto's eyes lit up. "I do?"

Riley nodded and took one hand. She traced upon its back, calling to her the Wind and the World. In the wake of her fingers drew a single line across his veins, lit up with the pale yellow of the magicks of wind.

All had their own color. For Water was blue, Fire was red, Earth was green and Wind was Yellow. All Atlanteans were marked with the blue, Naruto would be the first person in history to bear the marks of the ocean in the color of the skies.

She took his other hand and repeated the action. Making them balanced. Two crescents with a tail that curled opposite.

As soon as Riley let go Naruto pulled his hands up where he could inspect her marking, his eyes wide in the dark. When he was older, stronger, more connected to the winds his eyes would light the same shade as his skin.

Her student grinned up at her, joy radiating off of him, into the air. She was knocked off her feet entirely when he threw himself at her, wrapping his arms around her neck and sending them both tumbling into the water behind. The quiet of the night was shattered by startled laughter and splashing water.

Through all of this, the moon watched on.


	11. Chapter 11

**For anyone wondering,** **Naruto is eight, Riley is twenty four.**

 **Reviews;**

 **wyteeth: girl doesn't exactly disguise her being a witch, so who knows what people say about her!**

 **k123: That was totally unintentional foreshadowing tbh ^^'**

 **UmbeonGurl: Thanks, I will!**

 **Wicked Neko: I dunno if you've ever seen Young Justice but she's kinda like Kaldur. If you haven't, she's human shaped, but she has gills on her neck. They're usually under her hair, or a scarf, or something. There are others on her ribs that haven't had a chance to show up. I see what you mean about it moving fast, I'll try to work on that!**

 **moon so bright: Thank you! I think about these things way too much.**

 **blank435: Yes! That's absolutely what I was going for!**

 **donstehly2: Thank you?**

 **Summertime Sasuke: ...I may or may not have her entire history written as an original story.**

 **Ratchet Girl: Thanks! I love magic, and I love HP and Fairy Tail, but I wanted to do my own thing with this one!**

 **Alice: Sweet!**

 **jj : Thanks!**

 **Anonymous Legacy : Type moon is Fate Stay Night, right? I saw some of that, but I never got around to finishing it. What I'm working off of is almost entirely original, with a basis in Greek elemental beliefs and some references to Tamora Pierce's Circle of magic. As for her place as a background character, it will only last so long. She won't make a place for herself as a messiah or anything, but when it comes down to it she'll show what she's got. And she's got a lot.**

 **DannyPhantom619: I seriously forgot about Kaguya when I was writing that chapter! Now I'll have to involve her in this somehow! Orochimaru would kill to know some of what she knows. Say, the secret to the Elixir of Life...  
**

* * *

Day 1224: Konohagakure, Ochiai Apartment Complex, B5

"Happy birthday dear Naruto, Happy birthday to you!" The chorus ended with a long, mangled 'oo', children's voices mixing adults, boys with girls.

It was a party held in her apartment with part of her young charges class and their parents. She stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders while she belted out the lyrics. She was smiling, and so was the little blond.

Around them had gathered Naruto's friends, Shikamaru, Choji, and Kiba. Their mothers had all come too, as was tradition of children. Riley hadn't been to many kids parties, but she had lived across from a woman with five little girls, and until double digits where the kids went, so too did at least one parent.

Riley had never met most of them outside of after school pick up, and they didn't talk too much then, but so far she found that she liked Kiku well enough. The Akamichi matriarch had brought the cake, and better yet she held no ill will to little Naruto, who was having his first ever birthday party.

"I dont' know how you got all of the civilians to stay away," Yoshino said, her voice quiet enough the children would not hear.

Riley pointed to the window with her cane, stepping back so Naruto could hand out pieces to his friends. A flash of blue on the glass betrayed her spellwork, lighting up a fanciful pattern that covered all of the glass.

"I put up a few things. Anyone who wants to hurt Naruto won't' be able to see this place," she said simply.

"Won't' be able to see it?" Kakashi mimicked. He knew by now that there was always a little more to her explanations, if only someone offered a bit of prompting.

Riley tilted her head, just a little. The small scarf perpetually around her throat rubbed her gils uncomfortably. Light flashed through her eyes and gleamed for just a second over a window, flickering a dim grey.

"It's a Hades Helm Glamour. If they seek Naruto with the intent of harm, they'll walk right by the building without seeing it," she explained. It was a difficult piece of Erudite magic she had learned some time ago, one of the more useful bits in her personal opinion.

The ninja parents looked at eachother, then at her.

"I didn't know you could do that," Kakashi said blandly. He never really seemed surprised when she did something unexpected, but everything about him was unflappable.

She shrugged. "It's not like I've given you a complete list of things I am and am not capable of doing."

"What can you do?'' It was Tsume who asked while eyeing the little macigian.

Riley cocked her head. "A lot, but not everything," when her cryptic words only earned her a frown she relented. "I don't know what to tell you. I can craft a Glamour, but I can't Scry a Prophesy, I can call a tidal wave but I can't redirect the path of the sun," she gestured with the hand that didn't hold a cane. "Honestly, most of what I do I forget I can do it at all until becomes useful."

"Could you put those Glamours on my apartment?" Her neighbor asked, rather suddenly. A soundless murmur went through the rest of ninja present. It occurred to her that such a thing would be very, very, valuable to people with their occupation. Riley shifted, leaning more of her weight on her cane.

"It is… difficult work. It takes time, only lasts a few months, and requires pieces that I am, quite frankly, all out of," she confessed.

It was Tsuma who, with a narrow of her eyes, asked, "What are you missing?"

"The feather of a Great Potoo, the armor of a seahorse, and a piece of the person I'm hiding," she listed. Her fingers tapped her cane to punctuate each piece. Everything else she had on hand. Over the years she had gathered things that she thought might be useful. It was amazing how much merchants brought in that they had no idea what it could be used for. Plants they offered because the flowers were pretty, rocks they sold for cheap because they were common or flawed. Even books of myth thought to be false.

"The feather of a Great-, a Great Potoo?" Yoshino repeated.

Riley's mouth twitched upwards. "That's a personal preference. I think they're fun. An owl or a nightjar feather would work just as well. But my books will say otherwise!"

Kakashi gave her a funny look. Behind him, the children were halfway through Kiku's pretty cake. Bright, glaring orange frosting smeared across Naruto's cheek, over the three stripes there.

"What? Ninja aren't the only ones allowed to have fun," she defended, mocking a haughty sniff.

Tsume snorted a laugh and slapped her back so hard she almost hit the ground face first. Witch's were also not the only ones allowed to be strong.

They were interrupted when a piece of potato salad went sailing into the wall, cutting between the adults. Riley looked over just in time to watch Naruto whip his arms up, catching a riceball in a cocoon of wind. His arms glowed with the magick.

"What are they for?" Kakashi asked, nodding to the three lines on Naruto's arm. They would stay visible all the time until he had been awarded the first set to grace his cheeks.

"They demonstrate where one stands now terms of ability," she said. Simple. Though, she had known them all her life. From her first glimpse into her father's face to the last smile she allowed her mirror, they were integral to her entire existence.

"A badge?" Kakashi figured. He watched Naruto guide the rice around his body, the little boys face broken with a grin before it was sent hurdling towards Shikamaru.

Riley corrected, "a warning."

"It's foolish to tell someone how strong you are," he countered.

"My people had a saying," she adjusted her grip on her cane. "Do not kill if you can cripple, do not cripple if you can subdue, do not subdue if you can pacify. Never raise your hand at all, unless you have first extended it. These markings are a sign of, and a paradox to, that philosophy."

"You want to pacify, but fear works just as well," Kakashi surmised. "Have you shared that philosophy with Naruto?"

"No," Riley confessed, "I didn't think it would be appropriate given your line of work."

Yoshino peered at her, her eyes intense, "does it bother you?"

"Yes," she said, truthful. "But my father was a soldier. He never allowed me to set myself into such delusions that death is unnecessary, or conflict possible to stamp out."

"What country are you from?" Tsume asked next. Riley closed her eyes, a wave washing over her. This interrogation wasn't really a surprise. They were not the first to ask.

"It used to be in the seas. It's been swallowed by the waves now."

The solemn air the took hold of her was broken when she was struck by flying food. Her apartment was turning into a warzone.

Riley wiped it away from her cheek, her mouth twitching while she tried to put on a stern expression towards her little student, who was looking very distinctly at anything that was not her. Riley reached behind her, towards the sink.

Water flowed from the faucette and follower her fingers when she flung them forwards, pointing to the boy who shouted before he was caught in the face with a few gallons.

He sputtered and coughed, but it turned into laughter only a few minutes later. Riley shook her head fondly. They could clean up later, she figured. Tsume, unfortunately, thought otherwise. Riley pitied her son. He might well fear women his whole life.

She was aware of the eyes on her back, but ignored them as she went to fetch a rag.

* * *

" _Mamah, Pateras!" Limnoreia hit the pair with the force of a tsunami, sending man and woman topping back to somersault in the water. Hair went everywhere, and the pretty ribbon gauze that her Mamah liked to wear around her arms twisted around the three until there was no easy way out._

" _You did that on purpose," the Mu accused, her tail coming around to flick the girls short hair. Blond floated right into her eyes and the little one whined._

" _I did the jet, did you see? Did you see? Did you, Mamah?" she grabbed at the woman's shoulder, smiling brilliantly in the dim light of the crystals. It was technically night, so they were low and only lit it a little bit of the room. The white walls pulsed with the soft violet light._

" _I saw," she promised, kissing her forehead. Limnoreia looked up at her from under her bangs, baring her teeth. The gesture was mimicked by the razor sharp fangs of her mother._

" _You're getting stronger," her Pateras praised, touching one of the marks that she bore upon her cheeks. They were fade into her skin once she received her third tier, but now, at two, they remained a blackness painted on her already dark skin._

 _Limnoreia smiled brilliantly, beaming under the praise._

" _Soon, I might take you to see the surface," he said it casually, but it got her attention right away._

" _Really?" she twisted, trying to wiggle out of the cocoon she had gotten the three of them in. It did no good._

" _Hush," Itzel scolded, swatting him with a blue hand. Phrixus made a face at his wife._

" _It's all in good fun. Besides, she'll have to go see it eventually."_

 _Itzel frowned. "I don't think she does. "_

" _She's Atlantean, it's tradition," Phrixus insisted. Itzel's frown deepened and she pulled the wiggling girl tighter into her arms._

" _We may have given her an atlantean name, but she's just as much Mu. And we have a long tradition of not getting involved in the surface."_

 _The argument went on, but Limnoreia had stopped listening. She hated this talk. They had it once a week, these days. She was tired of them. She wanted to go to the surface more than anything else. She wanted to see the humans and the animals and the sky without leagues of water between it and her._

 _But she couldn't go there on her own._

 _So she would wait. Patient as the tide, strong at the hurricane._

 _She would wait._


	12. Chapter 12

**DannyPhantom619: Oh yes they would! And wouldn't it be a shame if they were to, hmmm, come after them for the knowledge?**

 **Orlha: It's totally a romance thing my dude, I will tell you that now.**

 **HorroAddict: Yep**

 **Girlsdream: Thank you! You will ^^**

 **Libraryrockerr: YOU"RE VERY WELCOME!**

 **Guest from October 3rd: It might be foreshadowing. Or back shadowing?**

 **Guest from October 4th: Thanks!**

 **Chobits15: Well, I'm answering your question now!**

 **J: you're welcome! Thank you !**

 **K123: it's not like she's all that subtle about her magic, so they don't need to be subtle about their questioning, right?**

 **Guest from October 12th: thanks!**

Day 1609: Konahagakure Ochiai Apartment Complex, B5

"Hey, Rei?" Naruto poked her arm. He was standing next to her work table in the apartment that he had, at some point, moved into. Riley looked up from where she had been folding the charms closed. It was all hallows, and she could feel the strength of it in her veins. The space between worlds was at its weakest, but still she could not pass through the barrier. But, she could draw her strength from it.

"Yes?" she moved one arm and he took his place in her lap. He was getting big. Riley went back to folding, her student working in tandem,

"You said that most people take trips with their teachers, right? Most witch's see the whole world?"

Riley nodded. In her case, it was more than just one world.

"That's right. It's tradition."

"Then, will you take me to see the world?" Naruto's voice was small. Riley was surprised. She paused her work to slip her arms around him, pulling the boy back against her. He leaned into the embrace.

"One day," she promised. "But we have to ask the Hokage first. He is your guardian. And, there is always the factor of your schooling, and your being a shinobi later on."

"Once I'm a shinobi, I'll be independent, right? I won't have a guardian at all."

Riley shrugged. "I'm not sure. I believe you're assigned a team, or at least a teacher who isn't a witch," she poked his side and Naruto laughed.

"Hey!" he whined, wiggling in her arms.

Riley laughed at him lightly. She glanced out the window and smiled, just a little. The sun was starting to burn the sky soft pinks and oranges. The moon would be rising soon, full and silver on the witch's night.

" _Mamah, what does the moon look like? Mamah, why is the Dark so much stronger today?"_

"Naruto," she said, "We're going out tonight."

The nine year old turned in her arms.

"How come?" he asked.

"Because tonight is all hallows. Halloween. It is a sacred night for creatures like us, beings of magick. Where our power is at its strongest. Can you feel it?"

Naruto leaned into her and she heard him breath in his air. Then, he laughed.

"I feel it! It's so cold!"

Riley smiled. It was. It was like the first snowflakes that fell when autumn's leaves wiped out into the night. It was a time of vows and new beginnings. Or strongest spells and binding power. She squeezed him gently.

"We'll go once the sun is gone."

* * *

Konohagakure Akai Kawa

Kakashi had the strangest feeling that he was intruding.

He hadn't even been trying to witness the proceedings of his neighbors, in all honesty. The birthday party had been hard for him to attend, and he'd been at the memorial more often than before. He'd been walking back after standing in front of it for hours when he saw the pair on the river bank.

Rei stood with both arms above her head, her cane clasped in both hands. Most of her weight was on her left leg, and her long skirts spun around her in wind that Kakashi couldn't even feel. The ground around her and Naruto, who had his eyes on the sky, was littered with markings. It looked like fuinjutsu, but Kakashi couldn't recognize any of the symbols.

The clouds overhead parted and moonlight spilled down across her shoulders, down her skirts and into the earth. The marks on the ground glowed brightly with that same light, then brighter still. It was unearthly. He'd never seen anything like it.

Kakashi pulled up his headband and opened his eye.

What he saw threatened to blind him.

He looked away, shutting the sharingan behind his headband again. Whatever the light was, chakra or something else, it was bright. Brighter than the sun, and the moon and all the stars. And it came from Rei. From something inside of her.

He heard Naruto gasp and laugh, the raw joy ringing out around them.

Kakashi glanced back, and saw the boy spinning around, his arms stretched out. The moonbeams bent around him like water before it went on its way to pour into the markings on the earth. A fan, folded up, was gripped in one of his hands.

The feeling of intruding intensified. This wasn't something he was meant to see, he realized as he watched the designs paint themselves across Riley's arms, shining right through her dress. The markings drew all the way down her back, curving around her back and spinning over her hips, down her legs and over her feet.

A red circle blared out from where her heart was.

The same light danced over Naruto's arms, inching halfway to his elbows. His eyes had vanished behind the light and his smile only intensified it all.

Midnight passed the minute and the light dimmed. It started centering into the tip of Rei's cane and the stone inlaid in Naruto's fan.

Kakashi watched at the light vanished inside.

For a long instant it felt like there wasn't anything else in the world. Just the two of them. Even Kakashi felt his existence fade from his consciousness. The trees, the water, the memorial stone vanished from his senses. All he knew was Rei and Naruto.

Rei lowered her cane to the ground. The soft thump echoed through his heart and he sucked in suddenly, the air filling him and sending him flinging back into the world.

When Rei turned towards him, he didn't know what to do. He lifted his hand and slumped his shoulders, trying to look casual and lazy.

Her smile was ethereal.

* * *

Day 1650 Konohagakure, Reefside

Riley wasn't sure she wanted to know why the pair had decided to have a reading contest of all things in her shop, nor why it involved using books that were in an entirely different language than the one that they knew.

"This one is Atlantean, this one is Old English," she handed one to each of them, story books. History books. The one about her country's sinking into the ocean. And another about a hero laid to rest in a dragon's keep. "And these are my own basic dictionaries of each," she added, handing one book to both men.

"Thanks, Rei," Kakashi waved at her.

"Don't you two normally climb mountains or jump high building with a single bound?" she inquired. She sat across from them, one leg under the other.

"It was my rival's turn to issue the challenge," Gai said sullenly. It was clear he would have rather been out in the sun. Riley liked him, for all he was a little too loud. He offered help and wasn't insistent or indignant when she denied it.

"I see," she nodded sagely. She had heard about their constant competitions. Seen plenty of them. "Just don't hurt the books. Or you'll swim with the sharks," she inclined her head to the nearest tank and smile cheekily at them.

Kakashi gave her a closed eye smile.

"I don't think you could take us," he declared.

Riley shook her head. "Beware, it goeth before the fall," she warned, her voice still playful, her mouth still smiling, before she removed herself from the men. She had tea packets to finish making. And besides that, they were probably right. She could fight, but ninja were on a whole other level from her. Maybe if they were at sea, maybe if they were long distance fighters she could do some damage, but Kakashi and Gai were well beyond her capabilities. They were too gods damned fast.

While she did that, Naruto ran around filling the shelves. With about a dozen other Naruto's. Kakashi had taught him some mimicry when it became apparent that illusions were beyond his capability. Riley didn't quite understand all of it, but Naruto seemed happy, so that was okay.

There were some things that she couldn't teach him, things that he needed to know. And things that would be too dangerous to try to teach him.

She glanced, one last time at the pair trying to learn a new language on the fly, before she returned to her work. Perhaps she would make something special for the winner.

A smile crossed her face and she pulled down a jar of powdered birds bones before she opened the drawer where she kept her sage. She considered what to make the talismans base out of, and settled on piece of metal with a lead stamped onto it. It seemed suitable.

Yes, to the victor would go the spoils.

Day 1999: Yase Village

Riley regretted that she wasn't able to bring her little student with her, but there was no way he was being allowed to leave the village with her. She'd asked and been swiftly denied by the Hokage.

Riley didn't know what it was that made it so important that Naruto, who was treated rotten, be kept behind the great walls. And she was about finished being left out of the loop.

Her frown was still fixed firmly on her face when she, and the small party that had come to fetch her, walked beneath the posts that connected to tell travellers where they had come to. Yase Village. It was small, and every other house she could see was burnt away into ashes while the others on either side remained untterly untouched. Unnatural fire did that.

It was no wonder that the elders had sent for someone. Still, her reputation must have spread very far indeed if they called for a witch before a shinobi.

"We will take you to the elders, and you can rest afterwards. I'm sure you're tired" Tomoe said from where he drove their cart. The horse was probably more tired that she was.

"Thank you," she said simply. She watched the people they passed. Sallow eyed and down cast. Death hung across the area like a thick fog and she could feel it in the air. She already knew what had happened to this place. The only thing left to do was to find the focal point of it, and who had set it. The devil was in the details. In this case, quite literally.

They bounced across a great crack in the road that connected one destroyed house to the other. Riley narrowed her eyes at it and turned in the cart. That was too straight to be natural.

They finished passing roasted buildings, and for the rest of the street they all stood sturdy and unblemished. Save one that shone in her magical sight. Her eyes flashed, momentarily, from blue to violet. Interesting.

Tomoe brought them to a stop in front of a mansion at the end of the road. It sprawled across a well kept garden of sand and stone, and a gaggle of old men stood on the front porch, beside a pair of men in black cloaks. He was kind enough to offer a hand down, one that she ignored in favor of dropping to the ground. How she missed the grace of the ocean.

The sky above them rumbled, threatening rain as clouds, thick and rolling, swelled into the sky. She had heard that it rained heavily in this part of the country, near the border to the Land of Floods. They were less than a mile from the country line.

Riley walked up to the elders, taking the steps with intentional dignity.

"Hello," she said, "I was sent for by a, Kazuya," she held out the letter that had been delivered to her doorstep a week ago. It was slow going if one was not a ninja.

"I am Kazuya," an ancient creature, his face so gnarled she thought he might be carved from a tree, stepped towards her. He was dressed in fine red silks, and a black cloak fell across his shoulders. What little of his silver hair was left was tied on top of his head. She could not see his eyes.

"I am Rei Lee," she nodded to him, "The Witch."

"A witch?" one of the cloaked men tipped his broad straw hat up to peer down at her. "You don't look like much."

She had to crane her neck up, up, up to see him. When she saw the face that looked back at her, her throat caught tight and her heart jumped in to join the lump that was already there.

"And you don't look like you belong on land," she replied around the tightness. How long had it been since she had seen someone like him? How many years since she had seen one of her own people? A creature of the sea?

He laughed, showing off razor sharp teeth that punched Riley with memories of her mother. He was of Mu.

"What a funny girl, don't you think so, Itachi?" He nudged the much shorter figure at his side. His had shifted as well and dark eyes looked up to meet her own. He was so small. A teenager, so much younger than she was. Riley was struck with the sudden urge to protect him.

"I don't see what's so funny," 'Itachi' retorted.

"What are you ninja doing here anyhow?" she asked, leaning a little more heavily on her cane.

"We weren't sure you would be able to handle such a large task without some assistance," Kazuya told her blandly. Riley frowned at him.

"And what part of these fires would require combatants?" she levelled him with a look. There had been scant details when they had asked her help.

Kazuya lowered his head. "Please, come in and we will explain, in greater detail."

"That would be nice," she said dryly. She pulled her mages kit, which was really just her backpack, higher up. She followed after Kazuya with Itachi and the Mu behind her. The three were lead through the house, a grand structure with a courtyard and over a dozen rooms.

Kazuya turned them into a room with a wide, low table that had cushions placed around it. Riley frowned. She would have prefered a chair. Getting up from sitting on the ground was a pain and a half.

Still, she fell to her knees, grimacing from the pain that shot through her bad leg, and lay her cane across her lap. The Mu sat to her left, with Itachi on his left, at the end of the table. Kazuya took the head of the table and his people, Tomoe included, sat across from them.

"Tell me when this all began," Riley instructed. She ignored the frown one of the old men aimed at her. A witch did not live to please, she lived to help and she lived to live free. She lived to learn and grow beyond what her forebearers did and pass all of it onto the next generation, who would surpass what she was as well.

"Twelve months ago," he said, slowly, "A man came to town. We did not know him and he did not say anything when he entered. He walked up to one house, to Nishiki's house, and drew on his door. That night ,at midnight, the house lit on fire and everyone inside it burned to death. Two weeks after that he went to Shiranui's house and drew on his door, and at midnight the house lit on fire and everyone inside it burned to death. The next time we saw him we tried to stop him. We shouted, we screamed. Momo tried to grab his arm but her arm slipped through like water," Riley listened to him. Above head, the storm finally broke. "Someone took a bat to his head but it broke across his skull and he didn't move an inch. Two weeks after that, it was Kotauru's house. People tried to leave the village after that. But the morning after they left the gates they woke up inside their homes, in their own beds. After Kotauru is was Hiiragi, then Shū, Akiko, then Sota. Koshi. Masaomi. Kosuke. Shohei. Yujiro. Tatsuya. Himori. Ryuho. Seigo. Tenkei. Takeru. Sukuno. Moguro. Shudo. Otori. Hidaka. Last time, it was-" his breath caught before the old man coughed, "Izumo. We can't run, we can't fight, and the fire doesn't stop burning."

"What color is the fire?" Itachi asked. Riley glanced at him. That was a witch's question.

"The color- the fire burns blue," Kazuya said.

Riley let out a sigh. She had thought he might say that. Blue fire.

"Hell fire," Riley's voice fell across the room. Blanketed those present. "It burns all those who have sinned. Have any infants perished?" she asked.

"Infants?" it was the man beside Tomoe who spoke up. He too was old, but his face still remained human. His blue eyes flashed when lightning struck outside.

"Infants," Riley repeated. "Or children too young to be cruel. Hell Fire will wash off of them like water off of stone. Animals too. Everyone else, men and women, will smoulder in the flames. For Hell Fire burns not only the body, but the soul."

A heat in her chest beat red.

"No," Kazuya shook his head. "None of the families had children that young."

"And this sign, what was it?"

The old men looked at each other.

"Accounts differ," the blue eyed man said. "Sometimes it's a stair case. Sometimes its priest with long hair. Sometimes it was a lizard, a bird. Even just a triangle. "

Riley hadn't been expecting that. She used the table and her cane to push herself up.

"Show me all the houses," she instructed.

Tomoe looked at the door, left open to the courtyard where puddles were starting to form.

"Right now? It's a storm out there!"

Riley walked towards the door, smiling a bit.

"The water has never hurt me, and i don't think that it will hurt you either. You enemy here is fire, isn't it? Rain should be your friend," as it was hers. She looked out into the water that fell from the sky and thought of home. "Besides, you have guests at the door."

Tomoe scrambled up then, moving with even less grace than she had. She heard the Mu, who's name she really should have learned, laugh closer the seats were. They had followed her too. The sound of socked feet followed her to the front door, where she stepped aside to allow Kazuya to look out over a crowd that had gathered in the rain.

"Does everyone in this country have a flare for the dramatic?" she inquired idly. Onema n stepped in front of the rest of the gathered people. There was a fire in their eyes now. Humans were such odd creatures.

"Izo, what are you doing here?" Kazuya asked.

"What am I doing here? What are they doing here!" he pointed to Riley, and the two men. "The last time a stranger came to us he started burning our houses! Now only three days before he comes again you bring more strangers to us?!"

Izo swung his arm about, gesturing wildly. One of his hands was charred.

"They have come to help us! Friends, from the Rain, and the Leaf! We have shinobi now, and a witch as well," Kazuya proclaimed. As old as he was his voice carried far. A leader. "They can do what we can not."

"This town is cursed! A man can no more break this curse than he can stop the rain!" Izo proclaimed. A rally can from behind him, other villagers agreeing. He was not the only one with burnt hands.

Riley stepped forwards. Her eyes glowed, blue light unfurled the lines along her arms and shone through the water that plastered against her skin. Her foot touched the earth and the rain stopped in the air.

Silence rang. Their attention was locked upon her. Lightning dropped out of the sky and onto her skin. It crackled through her bones as the tempest pulled itself inside her heart. It beat with a thousand screams.

The storm rolled inside her eyes as she cast her gaze across those gathered. The villagers, the shinobi. They stopped on Izo.

"It is a good thing then," she said, "that I am no man."


	13. Chapter 13

**A birthday gift to the wonderful chobits15! I hope this is what you had in mind 3**

 **The next real chapter will be posted on May 31st! It was supposed to go out with the last wave, but I sorta… lost it. And my flash drive. Whoops!**

* * *

When Rei Lee had first come to Konoha Genma hadn't thought much of it.

As one of the biggest ninja villages they were pretty used to getting refugees and oddballs. Sometimes he wondered if they didn't have some kind of obscure magnet that pulled weirdos and tragedies into their gate. Rei had seemed like one of those.

The most threatening thing about her was that she looked like she came from Kumo. She hadn't seemed like a ninja, and when they'd gone through her things nothing had stood out. He'd been impressed with how much she'd managed to stuff into a single backpack, he'd wondered what could have covered her so entirely in ash.

Still, she seemed harmless and her limb was certainly real, so he'd let her in and sent her along to the Refugee Center.

Now, years after that, he had re-evaluated his opinion.

He didn't think there was even a chance that she would try and bring harm to the village. He didn't think there was a cruel bone in her body, he was certain that she wasn't a spy, but he did know enough of her now to know one fact for certain.

She was dangerous.

When she first proclaimed herself a witch he, and most of the other ninja, thought she was insane.

When her charms actually worked, that changed. After the first time one her protection charms put up a barrier that kept a kunai from stabbing him in the back he started paying more attention to her. If she really could do that with just a few plants wrapped up in paper, what else could she do?

The answer to that was A Lot.

Admittedly the first few times he had wandered to her with the intent to watch it had been to make sure she wasn't a threat. Then he messed up. He did something he knew he wasn't supposed to do. Something that ensured that he was biased towards her and would have a hard time cutting her down if she turned out to be an enemy.

He became her friend.

* * *

There was something about Rei Lee that set Tsume's teeth on edge.

The young woman was kind, endlessly patient with questions about her so-called magic powers and adapted almost unnaturally quick to the way of life they upheld in the village. Tsume had no logical reason to dislike her. In fact, she _didn't_ dislike her.

Rei Lee was kind to a person the rest of the village hated, she didn't so much as bat an eye when Tsume told her some of the more beastial qualities of her own family, and she had no problem healing whatever scraps and bruises Kiba came to apartment with when he and Naruto had been competing over something again. She even had a sense of humor Tsume could get along with just fine.

Tsume didn't dislike her at all.

In the end it was just her instincts that told her to be weary, even then she had taken her a long time to understand what the feeling was. That unpleasant prickle to her skin whenever she entered a conversation with the woman. The twitch that spasmed through her bones the first time she'd ever seen Rei honestly irritated with the people who talked shit about her student.

It was the feeling of looking an apex predator in the eyes.

* * *

The first time Jiraiya had met Rei Lee he had been on the verge of having a coronary.

His god son, his _god son_ , had been playing around with nature chakra under the tutelage of someone that he'd never even heard of without any sort of supervision and almost got himself killed when it turned his arm into wood.

The wood threw him off, instead of being rock, but Jiraiya knew what he was looking at when he inspected Naruto's arm.

The old man had been right when he'd called Jiraiya back in an emergency reverse summons. He was the one who knew the most.

Then Naruto looked up at them and said, with absolute confidence, "Rei can fix it."

Jiraiya prided himself in being a sage. He knew all about natura chakra and how it worked. He knew how to use it, how to harness it. He thought he knew how to knock it out of someone when they went to far.

All of these things he thought were thrown out the window in the span of five minutes.

Jiraiya didn't like Rei Lee.

She was pretty, she loved Naruto obviously, but she was putting him in terrible danger by teaching him any of what she was. AND she had the gall to call it magic. At first Jiraiya had been certain that she was either crazy or full of shit and lying.

Then, someone had told him about the people she talked about once in a while and realized something amazing. There was a whole people who could do what she did the way she did it. There was possibly and entire village of folks running around using nature chakra like it was as normal as breathing, and she was just one young lady amongst who knew how many.

It was almost a comfort that they were gone now, according to her, but with them went so much knowledge that he would never get to.

The idea made him want to scream.

All those years studying and this little girl knew more than him. What made it worse was the fact that she was _right_. As soon as she had told him that nature was sentient he had spent hours meditating, working in sage mode, trying to find what she was talking about.

He did.

When he finally touched the proverbial mind of nature he had the distinct impression that it was laughing at him for taking so long.

Jiraiya didn't like Rei Lee all that much, but she had taught him something new. He would let her keep teaching Naruto, for now.

* * *

Their first meetings had been pretty uneventful.

In fact, if it weren't for Naruto's obvious attachment to her he probably would have written the little witch off as just another one of the weird people that flocked to Konoha in hordes and in droves. There was one on every corner, from Might Gai to Kakashi himself the village was full of people who didn't really fit in anywhere else.

But, Naruto was learning magic from her and that meant that Kakashi had to get involved. For the childs sake.

That was what he told himself at least. It had nothing to do with his own voracious appetite for knowledge. Nope. Definitely not.

And it definitely didn't have anything to do with her kind eyes, the kind of blue he'd only ever seen looking out over the ocean. Nothing to do with the wry smiles she would offer him on occasion or the steadfast way she insisted on feeding him, Naruto and the dogs.

Nothing at all to do with that.

Kakashi was always on alerts for threats to the village. At one point, when he first found out that magic of all things was real and she was capable of using it with just a snap of her fingers, he had thought she might be a danger to the village. He'd even gone to far as to tail her for entire week before he was finally satisfied that she wasn't malevolent.

Still, he had to keep an eye on her. That was the reason he went to her apartment. That was the reason he endeared himself to her.

Then, he realized something terrible.

He actually liked the woman.

After seeing her glowing in the light of the moon that night, he was starting to wonder if that was all there was to it.

If he liked her a little too much.

* * *

When he first met Rei, he was really confused by her. She didn't act like the other grown ups, the ones that threw things at him and didn't like him and told him to leave. She didn't even act like Iruka, who got mad when he didn't read what he told him too or the old man who didn't have that much time to see him.

She smiled at him and told him stories and found him books he would actually like. And when he stopped being able to sit still she took him down to river and played games with him, even though she couldn't run as fast or as good as he did.

She made him good food and fixed his clothes, pet his head and answered questions even he knew were probably stupid. She almost fought the weird old pervert when he tried to tell her she was bad for him.

Rei liked to pick him up from school when she could and she would show him things that she didn't show anyone else who came in the shop, like the circles she had to put under the door ways and the words she wrote on the floor. Naruto wasn't very good at learning the runes, so she didn't try and make him.

She told him that he was free to do what he wanted, like running with the wind and trying to do things that he maybe wasn't ready to yet. And when those things backfired and he ended up on his butt she would pull him up and hug him and ask if he was okay even though they both knew he was healed fast and and and-

Rei was what Naruto would imagine a mom was like.

Even if he did have a mom somewhere, Naruto didn't think it was too important anymore. Not if he had Rei.


	14. Chapter 14

**So many reviews! Thank you guys so much!  
**

 **I DONT KNOW WHY NOTHING UNDERLINED IN THE LAST CHAPTER I'M SORRY!**

 **Snickering Fox: I freaking love this girl. I also, may have been watching ATLA while writing that last chapter. Maybe.**

 **donstehly2: Thank you!**

 **Guest from October 30th: I'll do my best, thank you!**

 **ShugoYuuki123: Thanks here you go!**

 **Aramary: Thanks!**

 **libraryrockerr: Riley is a badass! You're welcome ^^**

 **Winterlover6: Yes she is! Love this lady**

 **JBebe: My drama babe will swallow a storm whole if it gets in her way :D**

 **Anonymous Legacy: It will certainly make it interesting when they come to try and kill her son, won't it?**

 **Aliathe: That is definitely my favorite thing I've ever written, I gotta be honest with you. Thank you so much for saying such about my writing!**

 **amg: thank you so much~ I'm actually really proud of that chapter, it's awesome that other people like it too!**

 **Guest from October 30th: Thank you so much!**

 **Gerbilfriend: Thank you!**

 **littleditto:... I think you're write. Oh dear.**

 **orla: Thank you!**

 **NatNicole: Thank you! *Might Guy style thumbs up* I do my best!**

 **girlsdream: indeed**

 **calcu22: thank you! Love that line.**

 **Guest from November 3rd: Thanks!**

 **Investedintrovert: Thank you so much!**

 **dayum: damn straight**

 **yolea Irk's : Oh my gosh, thank you so much! I'll have to look into that! When I first read that I thought it was a recommendation for _Stars in Her Eyes_ , which I LOVE and almost lost my goddamn mind**

 **Desta-Lee Shante: I mean... if you live for my writing I'll accept that to, but you might not... live very often.**

 **danialacharry97: Thanks? I think that means 'a fine story' or something, so thank you!**

 **k123: Kakashi is so lucky he's not a cat, or that curiosity would have gotten him killed already**

 **iram0123: Oh gosh, I hope today is better at least! And I hope this chapter is up to standards.**

 **BlueSeraphos: Thank you!**

* * *

Day 2000: Yase Village

For someone who did not have two good legs, Riley could really get the let out when she needed to. Swinging her aching leg between the uninjured one and the cane she lead the pair of ninja through the village. Kazuya had sent Tomoe to show them where each house was, and he had tried to go slow for the witch. All he had really done was serve to speed her up.

Riley inspected the fifth building briefly. The feeling inside it made her skin crawl. It was dark and it slithered inside of her leg, clawing from the inside out.

She left quickly, eager to get things over, and to stop the feeling. It was horrible.

"I don't understand what you're looking for," Tomoe said, frowning at her from her side. The two ninja meandered behind her, much more lax than the guide. She was still going to have to ask him about his heritage before this was over. If the children of Mu were here…

Maybe she wasn't as alone as she thought.

"I can't find what I need if I don't see the crime scenes," she said simply.

Tomoe made a face and Riley hide her smile in her red scarf. She did enjoy the aspect of witchery that demanded vague, often times unpleasant answers.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Tomoe asked. It was Riley's turn to make a face.

"I did not."

"What are you looking for?" Itachi asked at length. He was quiet, Riley was quite certain that this was the third time he had addressed her directly. Kisame was a much more jovial sort, he liked scared Tomoe with his sharp teeth.

"A sign. Everyone who uses magic leaves a trace of their Essence behind, a signature, if you will. With Erudite magic especially, it's very particular," she half expected him to ask her to explain everything she had just said, but he merely grunted.

"What does that mean?" Tomoe asked, grimacing.

"Erudite is the stuff that comes out of books, and cauldrons. The things that needs the runes you saw on the door for," she waved her free hand, "It's very restrictive. A bit like what ninja use. Juicetos?"

"Jutsu," Kisame supplied.

"Yes, that. The chakra ratio and the handsigns are exact, aren't they?" she waited for one of them to nod, "And chakra, can you tell who's is what?"

"Some people, if they're talented with sensing. Most folks can't tell who's who right off."

"It's the same with Essence. It's harder with Ambient magic, what I use, because it mixes with what's in the world around us. Erudite is only that persons Essence. It's very distinct. And it always leaves something behind… the problem here, is that hellfire can burn away its traces. I'm hoping there will be something left, though I doubt it."

They stepped into the sixth house. The fire had burned everything away, again. Riley pressed her lips together. It would be easier to combat if she could know who was doing this. And why.

Magic was, in the end, only three things. Power, focus, and effect. With Erudite the person supplied the power, and object, typically a wand or words, created the focus, and the effect was rather obvious.

Cut the power, break the focus, and the effect ended.

With the sixth house a bust they moved on to the seventh, the eighth, and on until they had covered all twenty five. They had very little time before the stranger returned and she had a lot of ground to cover. Combatting hellfire was beyond her capabilities, which meant that she needed to prevent it. So she needed all the information she could get.

This was easier when she still had Morgan and Viv. They had years of experience on her, they had seen everything the world had to offer. They would know what was going on.

They would know why there had been twenty five attacks instead of this person stopping at three, four, six or seven. This was unprecedented. This was much more frustrating than she originally thought.

Tomoe lead them to back to the big house that had become their home base and left Riley with the ninja. She sunk to the floor with a grimace, rubbing her leg. The young witch glared at the table in front of her, mind whirling. The numbers were wrong. The shape…

"Christ, I miss google maps," she muttered, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

"You miss what now?" Kisame dropped across from her, sword leaned against his side. Itachi sat more gracefully than the pair of them combined, perfectly postured.

"A map from the sky, perfectly exact. Like a picture. Maybe it would help me see something I'm missing."

"What you're missing. Like the star."

Her head snapped to Itachi. "Pardon?"

"In the order that the incidents happen forms a seven pointed star," dark eyed met her pale blue and Riley's heart almost stopped. Seven pointed star. Seven pointed fucking star.

"I need a map of the village," she scrambled at her bag, tearing for a notebook. Did they have a map of the village? Could someone draw one for her? Fuck, what else had she missed? And seven? Was that right? That couldn't be right. If that was true then, then something else going on.

Itachi plucked the paper from her hands and produced a pencil. He drew a miraculously exact map of the village. Riley managed to pull out a few multicolored pens to hand him when he was done. Before her eyes he marked every incident site in order, color coordinating them. Then, he handed it back to her.

He was right. It was a seven pointed star. Riley took another pen and finished it for what it was.

A demon summoning circle.

"Son of a bitch."

Kisame leaned across the table to see. "Fancy."

"Dangerous," Riley corrected. "That, will bring a demon straight out of the jaws of hell. The point almost overlap, three already in each point and that means that they're trying to strengthen it. Overlap the circle three times, you can summon a larger demon and keep it under control."

"They're going over it four times though," Kisame pointed out. Riley sighed, flicking a piece of pale hair off of her shoulder.

"That's the part that gets me. If they use the number four, then that throws it out of balance. It makes the summoning bit stronger but the control aspect of the circle is thrown off and weakened."

"How are you so sure that they aren't done? Or that tonight won't be the last one?"

She looked over at Itachi, who was staring very intently at her.

"The circle isn't complete. They aren't done yet, and they won't end with the next one. They can't summon anything with twenty six."

"...why not?" Kisame looked honestly interested now. Riley smiled and shifted closer.

"Twenty six is the number for iron. Creatures like demons, fae, even beings like you and I have an inherent weakness towards it."

"What do you mean by that?" Kisame cocked his head. Riley's brows furrowed.

"You are a child of Mu, aren't you? You certainly look like one."

"A child of what now?" Kisame stared. Riley frowned.

"Mu. It's- you know what, can we go over that later? People are being burned out of existing right now. Anyways, the point is the supernatural are weak to iron so twenty six is the opposite of what they're going for. They'll keep going over the circle four times."

"But why?" she grabbed her hair and pulled, glaring at the map. "Why four? Are they stupid? Or, is there a deeper meaning. Four corners of the earth? Four, vedas? The four letters in the name of god? Four bases of power? Four books of islam? Four, fuck it, archangels? Is it a passover thing? Four cups of wine, four sons, four questions? Or, fuck. Four horsemen? The valency of carbon!"

"It's death."

Riley's head snapped to Itachi.

"Four is a homonym for death," he said, totally calm.

"Four is death... " And perhaps unconnected, twenty eight in the hebrew gematria was _koakh_ , power. Coincidence, perhaps. A hand of ice wrapped around her heart. This was bed. This was very bad.

"They're summoning Samael."

They were summoning satan himself.

* * *

 _The plan they laid was so careful._

 _It was perfect, they knew he was after the object being displayed in the museum, the Nwyfre Runestone. It was next on a string of objects that he would need if he was going to take control of europe. This was it, their chance to catch Felix Faust one and for all._

 _Vivien adjusted her grip on the tiny enchanted knife in her hand, listening to steel sing softly to her. The room the dark, the displayed the only parts that were properly illuminated for the security cameras. Busts, statues, and painting decorated the interior, center of all was the Nwyfre Runestone. To anyone else it was just a relic of days gone by, but to someone with the sight for magic it pulsed softly, blue energy wrapped up inside the stone. It wasn't very big, for all the power it held. About the size of a human skull._

 _Morgan stood opposite of her in the room, her arms crossed over her chest. In the dark, her eyes glowed a soft gold. She had been there when the Runestone was formed, so many years ago_

 _Magic was dying in the world. It had started with Rome, spread across europe and on to the America's and Asia. Now, even the lost kingdoms were falling._

 _Vivien sighed through her nose._

 _There was a shift in the air and she knew, then, that he had arrived. Faust had entered the museum._

 _Morgan caught her eye from across the room and held up her hand in what was now a rock and roll sign. Between her extended fingers, a soft light flashed briefly. Magic ready to be used._

 _Vivien tightened her hold on the knife that was now shaking in excitement. They were both ready for a fight._

 _The door opened and Faust walked in. He was dressed entirely in black, and frankly it looked like he had crossed the 1500s with scene culture. He still had the wide, puffy sleeves and was wearing skinny jeans instead of hose, with socks over the top of them. His hair was chopped in a strange mockery of a bowl cut._

 _Vivien pressed her painted blue lips together. Morgan had a hand over her mouth, wide eyed with horror at the sight._

 _Faust was oblivious to them. He strutted into the museum like he owned it, careless of cameras or security men, who were already glamoured not to notice any of them. This was it. Vivien moved forwards, her barefeet silent on the floor. Her painted nails had just passed into one of the singular beams of light that rained from the rafter when the door was thrown practically off of its hinges._

 _Light spilled in, illuminating a small figure. It was a girl. A little black girl with platinum hair and glowing tattoos. An Atlantean._

 _Vivien stared. She had thought that the Atlanteans had died out. So what was this one doing here?_

 _The little one's face twisted up and with a scream she threw herself violently at Faust. Faust, for his part, smiled and swung a fist, smashing it into the girls stomach. She hit the ground, gripping her stomach. A knife flashed in Faust's hand, raised high above the child._

 _Vivien moved, crossing the floor in seconds to catch the child in her arms. Above her head lightning struck, smashing into a barrier Faust hastily erected to block Morgan's attack._

" _Let go!" The little girl twisted in her arm, fighted with literal tooth and nail. "I have to kill him, let me go!"_

 _Vivien did not. She held the girl right where she was and turned to Faust once more. With one arm she pinned the child to her side and with the other she lifted her knife, letting power flow into it and stretch it out into a long sabre._

 _She narrowed her eyes at him. Morgan stood at the side, her hand stretched out with a ball of lightning crackling before her palm. Faust looked between them, the girl, and the runestone before he spat and threw something at the ground. Smoke exploded around his feet in a fucking parlor trick._

 _Vivien spat a word and the smoke was gone. Along with the magician._

" _No!" she little girl screamed, thrashing harder. "Nononono! Let go! He got away!"_

 _Vivien exchanged a glance with Morgan. Their perfect plan had gone awry._

* * *

Day 2001: Yase Village

The storm cleared away, leaving the trio of impromptu demon fighters sitting on what Riley referred to as a porch that overlooked the courtyard in the center of the house. In front of them was a bucket of salt. Riley was diligently drawing small sigils on a set of exceedingly sharp kunai. Each one flashed blue just long enough to be seen before she set it back down and moved on to another.

Kisame was busy polishing his sword whilst Itachi packed packets of salt in replacement of smoke bombs.

"So," Kisame drawled at last. "What were you talking about you and me before?"

Riley neither paused not looked away from her work, dedicated to making sure that Kisame and Itachi's weapons would stand a chance against something mystical. In retrospect, she should have been doing this to her friends in Konoha as well. How selfish of her.

"Well, you are of Mu, aren't you? If you're not, I'm sorry. You look strikingly like my mother."

"...is this a joke?"

Riley frowned. "It certainly is not. You look like my mother's people, the people of Mu. I don't know what you're doing on land though. The civilization is in the ocean."

She looked, at last, to the man and saw him appear struck. Her brows furrowed.

"That's not the only thing," she went on, "That sword, it's maker mark is the Lady of the Lake," she pointed to the tiny symbol on the hilt of his massive sword. She pushed her cane towards him and point to the same mark an inch under the stone that capped it. "Mine was made by the same woman."

"No one knows who the Seven Swords of the Mist were made by," Kisame told her. He still picked up her cane and turned it over in his hands. There was, indeed, a small flash of light identical to the one on Samehada. A circle with a swan in flight above it.

"How did you get this?" there was wonder to his voice. Riley smiled. Wonder was a witch's delight. Hers, in any case.

"It was given to me by a friend," she said, recalling Viv's sharp wit and graceful bladework. The lazy days on the couch when the world grew boring and she cared only for changing the shade of her toenails. The nights when she brushed Riley's pale hair for her in front of a mirror that wasn't quite enchanted enough to hide the awkward teenager she used to be.

"So you are from the same place as my mother," she concluded. It soothed the old scars that tried to rise in her heart.

"Where is that?" he looked at her, excitement showing in his dark eyes. Riley's smile turned bittersweet.

"Mu. A continent under the sea. It's gone now, I'm afraid."

The disappointment was only there for a moment. "What was it like?"

Riley considered what to tell him, looking up at the clear blue sky. How did she even begin to describe the lost civilization? Where she did even start to tell him about everything he had never known? How many questions could she answer when she had no answers for her own? Like how Kisame had ended up in this world, and how many others of their kind were there.

"It was in ruins by the time I was born. Ages ago it flourished, but time diminished the empire. Mamah, my mother, was born there. She became a diplomat. That's how she met my soldier of a father. They married on an underwater mountain, above a volcanic crack in the seabed. They surrounded the largest city, Kumari Kandam. Almost every building there was a pyramid, with the tallest one home to the emperor. Xavi looked quite a bit like you. Only he had red spots on face.

The people were proud warriors, strong. They favored spears and speed, for the water. The light never reached all the way to the bottom of the ocean, where the cities dwelled. Instead they bred a whole current of bioluminescent jellyfish. Special people were trained in herding them to keep them above the kingdom. It was a wave of light that went out.

On special occasions they could even have the jellyfish change their colors from blue to yellows and green. They rippled with the waves in a dance above the towering pyramids. When the kingdom dell under attack, the jellyfish turned red and scattered."

"It sounds too pretty," Kisame made a face.

Riley laughed. "I was young when it was destroyed, so maybe I'm romanticizing it a little bit."

Mu had never really been her home anyhow. It was where her mother loved to take her, but Atlantis was where she grew up. Atlantis was where she learned how to fight, how to do magic. Atlantis had been her home.

It hardly mattered. They were both gone. The red pain in her chest throbbed.

Day 2002: Yase Village

Riley stood in front of one of the houses on the corner of the block. There were only two left that could be next in this pattern, this house or the one across the street, where Itachi and Kisame stood. Samehada could cut through the supernatural just as surely as her blade could. Water saturated the earth around them, left over not only from the rain but from the water that she had had the villagers pour onto the ground earlier that day.

Now, the sun was setting and night was on the rise. Wind blew, lifting her hair and the edge of her red scarf.

At the gate to the village, a dark figure appeared. It developed into a man, his gate smooth. The walk a warrior. Just as described, he said nothing. He looked at no one. He walked straight towards them. Riley tapped her can on the ground and the wooden part dissolved into ribbons of light. They fluttered lightly in the wind.

The man walked right up towards Kisame and Itachi, oblivious to the the young woman that came up behind his back. Kisame set his massive sword before them and Itachi held out a spelled piece of metal. Iron would have worked better, but he only owned steel.

Riley snapped her fingers and the water leapt from the ground, wrapping around the man in a tight cocoon. He kept trying to walk, his legs twitching even when they were pinned together.

Itachi frowned and stepped up. Riley came around, her steps uneven without assistance, and held her sword in the position to gut him if she needed. She looked at the man's face and frowned. His pupils were blown wide, his skin was ashen and his cheeks hollowed. His lips had shrunken and pulled back from his teeth.

"He's dead," Itachi understood.

"Inferius," Riley told him. "Enchanted corpses. They have no will of their own, they only obey the will of the master. This explains why they never stuck around to see their work completed. Fire is one of the few things that can kill the dead."

"So this is just a puppet. Who's pulling the strings?"

Riley frowned and reached up to place her hand on the creatures head. She shuddered at the dark feeling that invaded her stomach. She knew this Essence. It was the same one that had brought her here years ago.

Whoever had done this, had created the creature in the chimney that brought her here. And she knew them, though she couldn't place it. It was too familiar and too different at once.

"In any case, if we kill him now we destroy the pattern and stop the summoning," she sighed, irritated.

Itachi stepped up, flashed through a few hands signs, and raised his hand to his mouth. Riley knew the gesture and let the water part to make way for the fireball that incinerated the walking corpse.

"Well. That was anticlimactic."


End file.
